nl 


Li 


perio 

pertoi 

4 
perrni 

•" 
made 

t; 
losing 


E.  C.  BOENAU'S 


"^ 


CIRCULATING  LIBRARY, 


4h  y 


SHELBY,  OHIO. 


Readers  are  not  allowed  more  than  one ' 
book  at  a  time,  nor  for\a  longer  period  than 
two  weeks.     Will  also  be  held  accountable 
\for  same  until  returned. 


■ 


ity 


^v^> 


mother 

'    rules 

all     be 
rfifore. 

lember 

>ibrary 
Wed. ' 
I  Print, 


3.>7.2c 


*« 


sto 


^  \ty  Qfaolagirtti 


PRINCETON,  N.J. 


« 


X 


% 


Division      r*r-T       \  \  \ 

.1  I 


Section 


Fi       r  *" 


A    CINGHALESE     GENTLEMAN. 


GREATER  BRITAIN: 


A  RECORD  OF  TRAVEL 


MAR  17  I. 


ENGLISH-SPEAKING  COUNTRIES 


1866  and  1867. 


CHARLES  WENTWORTH  DILKE. 


WITH  MAPS  AND  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


NEW    YORK: 
HARPER    &    BROTHERS,    PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN     SQUARE. 


TO 

MY     FATHER 

I  DEDICATE 
THIS  BOOK. 


C.  W.  D. 


PREFACE 


r  " — 

In  1866  and  1867  I  followed  England  round  the  world ; 
everywhere  I  was  in  English-speaking,  or  in  English-gov- 
erned lands.  If  I  remarked  that  climate,  soil,  manners  of 
life,  that  mixture  with  other  peoples  had  •modified  the 
blood,  I  saWj  too,  that  in  essentials  the  race  was  always 
one.     \ 

The  idea  which  in  all  the  length  of  my  travels  has  been 
at  once  my  fellow  and  my  guide — a  key  wherewith  to  un- 
lock the  hidden  things  of  strange  new  lands — is  a  concep- 
tion, however  imperfect,  of  tne  grandeur  of  our  race,  al- 
ready girdling  the  earth,  which  it  is  destined,  perhaps, 
eventually  to  overspread. 

In  America,  the  peoples  of  the  world  are  being  fused 
together,  but  they  arc  run  into  an  English  mould :  Alfred's 
laws  and  Chaucer's  tongue  are  theirs  whether  they  would 
or  no.  There  are  men  who  say  that  Britain  in  her  age 
will  claim  the  glory  of  having  planted  greater  Englands 
across  the  seas.  They  fail  to  perceive  that  she  has  done 
more  than  found  plantations  of  her  own — that  she  has  im- 
posed her  institutions  upon  the  offshoots  of  Germany,  of 
Ireland,  of  Scandinavia,  and  of  Spain.     Through  America 

England  is  speaking  to  the  world. 

A  2 


x  Preface. 

Sketches  of  Saxondom  may  be  of  interest  even  upon 
humbler  grounds :  the  development  of  the  England  of 
Elizabeth  is  to  be  found,  not  in  the  Britain  of  Victoria, 
but  in  half  the  habitable  globe.  If  two  small  islands  are 
by  courtesy  styled  "  Great,"  America,  Australia,  India, 
must  form  a  Greater  Britain. 

C.  W.  D. 

76  Sloane  Street,  S.W.,  1st  November,  1868. 


CONTENTS. 


PART    I. 

CHAP.  rAG" 

I. — Virginia 17 

II.— The  Negro 27 

III.— The  South 35 

IV.— The  Empire  State 40 

V. — Cambridge  Commencement 47 

VI.— Canada..... 57 

VII. — University  of  Michigan G8 

VIII.— The  Pacific  Railroad 75 

IX. — Omphalism 82 

X. — Letter  from  Denver 85 

XI. — Red  Indian 95 

XII.— Colorado 101 

XIII. — Rocky  Mountains 104 

XIV.— Brigham  Young 110 

XV. MORMONDOM 1  14 

XVI. — Western  Editors 1 17 

XVII.— Utah 127 

XVIII.— Nameless  Alps 134 

XIX.— Virginia  Crrr 14G 

XX.— El  Dorado 156 

XXL— Lynch  Law 1G7 

XXIL— Golden  City 179 

XXIIL— Little  China 188 

XXIV.— California 195 

XXV.— Mexico 200 

XXVI. — Republican  or  Democrat 204 

XXVII.— Brothers 215 

XXVIIL— America 220 


s.u  Contents. 


PART    II. 
cnAr.  rx«n 

I. — Pitcairn  Island 228 

II.— Hokitika 233 

III. — Polynesians 24G 

IV. — Pakewanui  Paii 251 

V.— The  Maokies 2«G 

VI.— The  Two  Flies 273 

VII.— The  Pacific 278 


PART    III. 

I.— Sydney 2S2 

II. — Rival  Colonies 288 

III._Victoria 294 

IV. — Squatter  Aristocracy 307 

V. — Colonial  Democracy 312 

VI. — Protection 320 

VII.— Labor 328 

VIII.— Woman 33G 

IX. — Victorian  Ports 339 

X.— Tasmania 342 

XI. — Confederation 351 

XII. — Adelaide 354 

XIII.— Transportation 3G3 

XIV. — Australia 373 

XV.— Colonies 379 


PART    IV. 

I. — Maritime  Ceylon 38G 

II. — Kandy 39G 

III. — Madras  to  Calcutta 402 

IV.— Benares 409 

V.— Caste 415 

VI. — Mohammedan  Cities 425 

VII.— Simla 433 

VIII. — Colonization 445 

IX.— The  "Gazette" 451 

X. — Umritsur 458 

XL— Lahore 4G7 


Contents.  xiii 

CI1AP.  TAOK 

XII. — Our  Indian  Army 470 

XIII.— Russia 475 

XIV. — Native  States 484 

XV.— Scinde 493 

XVI. — Overland  Routes 500 

XVII.— Bombay 508 

XVIII.— The  Mohurrum 513 

XIX. — English  Learning 518 

XX.— India 524 

XXI. — Dependencies 535 

XXII. — France  in  the  East 539 

XXIII.— The  English 545 


APPENDIX. 
A  Maori  Dinner 548 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


VIEW   FROM    THE    BCLLER . .  )  ,  PAGI 

.Frontispieces. 

A   CINGHALESE    GENTLEMAN  ' 
PROFILE   OF    "JOE    SMITH  ".. .   , 


full  face  of  "  joe  smith  " 

torter  rockwell j  35 

Friday's  station — valley  of  lake  tahoe ) 

L ly-t 

TEAMFNG    UP   THE    GRADE    AT    SLIPPERY    FORD,    IN   THE    SIERRA  ) 

VIEW  ON   THE  AMERICAN   RIVER THE    PLACE  WHERE    GOLD  WAS    FIRST 

FOUND 158 

THE    BRIDAL    VEIL   FALL,    YOSEMITE    VALLEY 1 G4 

EL   CAPITAN,   YOSEMITE    VALLEY 1 9G 

THE   OLD  AND  THE   NEW  :   BUSH  SCENERY — COLLINS  STREET  EAST,  MEL- 
BOURNE      295 

GOVERNOR   DAVEY'S  PROCLAMATION 344 

MAPS. 

ATLANTIC  AND  PACIFIC  RAILROAD 7G 

LEAVENWORTH   TO    SALT   LAKE    CITY 8G 

SALT  LAKE    CITY  TO    SAN   FRANCISCO 138 

NEW    ZEALAND 234 

AUSTRALIA  AND   TASMANIA 289 

OVERLAND   ROUTES 501 


GREATER     BRITAIN, 


PART  I.  — AMERICA. 


CHAPTER  I. 

VIRGINIA. 


From  the  bows  of  the  steamer  Saratoga,  on  the  20th 
June,  1806,  I  caught  sight  of  the  low  works  of  Fortress  Mon- 
roe, as,  threading  her  way  between  the  sand-bauks  of  Capes 
Charles  and  Henry,  our  ship  pressed  on,  under  sail  and  steam, 
to  enter  Chesapeake  Bay. 

Our  sudden  arrival  amid  shoals  of  sharks  and  king-fish, 
the  keeping  watch  for  flocks  of  canvas-back  ducks,  gave  us 
enough  and  to  spare  of  idle  work  till  we  fully  sighted  the 
Yorktown  peninsula,  overgrown  with  ancient  memories — an- 
cient for  America.  Three  towns  of  lost  grandeur,  or  their 
ruins,  stand  there  still.  Williamsburg,  the  former  capital, 
graced  even  to  our  time  by  the  palaces  where  once  the  royal 
governors  held  more  than  regal  state ;  Yorktown,  where 
Cornwall's  surrendered  to  the  Continental  troops ;  James- 
town, the  earliest  settlement,  founded  in  1607,  thirteen  years 
before  old  Governor  AYinthrop  fixed  the  site  of  Plymouth, 
Massachusetts. 

A  bump  against  the  pier  of  Fortress  Monroe  soon  roused 
us  from  our  musings,  and  we  found  ourselves  invaded  by  a 
swarm  of  stalwart  negro  troopers,  clothed  in  the  cavalry  uni- 
form of  the  United  States,  who  boarded  us  for  the  mails. 
Xot  a  white  man  save  those  we  brought  was  to  be  seen  upon 
the  pier,  and  the  blazing  sun  made  me  thankful  that  I  had 
declined  an  offered  letter  to  Jeff.  Davis. 

Pushing  off  again  into  the  stream,  we  ran  the  gauntlet  of 


18  Greater  Britain. 

the  Rip-raps  passage  anil  made  for  Norfolk,  having  on  our 
left  the  many  exits  of  the  Dismal  Swamp  Canal.  Crossing 
Hampton  Roads — a  grand  bay  with  pleasant  grassy  shores, 
destined  one  day  to  become  the  best  known,  as  by  nature  it 
is  the  noblest,  of  Atlantic  ports — we  nearly  ran  upon  the 
wrecks  of  the  Federal  frigates  Cumberland  and  Congress, 
sunk  by  the  rebel  ram  Merrbnac  in  the  first  great  naval  action 
of  the  Avar ;  but  soon  after,  by  a  sort  of  poetic  justice,  we  al- 
most drifted  into  the  black  hull  of  the  Merrbnac  herself. 
Great  gangs  of  negroes  were  laboring  laughingly  at  the  re- 
moval, by  blasting,  of  the  sunken  ships. 

When  Ave  were  securely  moored  at  Norfolk  pier,  I  set  off 
upon  an  inspection  of  the  second  city  of  Virginia.  Again  not 
a  white  man  was  to  be  seen,  but  hundreds  of  negroes  were 
working  in  the  heat,  building,  repairing,  road-making,  and 
happily  chattering  the  while.  At  last,  turning  a  corner,  I 
came  on  a  hotel,  and,  as  a  consequence,  on  a  bar  and  its 
crowd  of  swaggering  whites — "  Johnny  Rebs  "  all,  you  might 
see  by  the  breadth  of  their  brims,  for  across  the  Atlantic  a 
broad-brim  denotes  less  the  man  of  peace  than  the  ex-member 
of  a  Southern  guerrilla  band,  Morgan's,  Mosby's,  or  Stuart's. 
No  Southerner  will  wear  the  Yankee  "stove-pipe1'  hat;  a 
Panama  or  Palmetto  for  him,  he  says,  though  he  keeps  to  the 
long  black  coat  that  rules  from  Maine  to  the  Rio  Grande. 

These  Southerners  were  all  alike — all  were  upright,  tall, 
and  heavily  mustached;  all  had  long  black  hair  and  glitter- 
ing eyes,  and  I  looked  instinctively  for  the  baldrick  and  ra- 
pier. It  needed  no  second  glance  to  assure  me  that,  as  far  as 
the  men  of  Norfolk  were  concerned,  the  saying  of  our  Yankee 
skipper  was  not  far  from  the  truth :  "  The  last  idea  that  en- 
ters the  mind  of  a  Southerner  is  that  of  doing  work." 

Strangers  are  scarce  in  Norfolk,  and  it  was  not  long  before 
I  found  an  excuse  for  entering  into  conversation  with  the 
"citizens."  My  first  question  was  not  received  with  much 
cordiality  by  my  new  acquaintances.  "How  do  the  negroes 
Avork  ?  Wall,  Ave  spells  nigger  with  two  '  g's,'  I  reckon." 
(Virginians,  I  must  explain,  are  used  to  reckon  as  much  as 
Ncav  Englanders  to  "  guess,"  Avhile  Western  men  "  calculate  " 
as  often  as  they  cease  to  SAvear.)  "Hoav  does  the  niggers 
work?     Wall,  niggers  is  darned  fools,  certain,  but  they  ain't 


Virginia.  l'j 

quite  sich  fools  as  to  work  while  the  Yanks  will  feed  'em. 
No,  sir,  not  quite  sieh  fools  as  that."  Hardly  deeming  it  wise 
to  point  to  the  negroes  working  in  the  sun-blaze  within  ;i  hun- 
dred yards,  while  we  sat  rocking  ourselves  in  the  veranda  of 
the  inn,  I  changed  my  tack,  and  asked  whether  things  were 
settling  down  in  Norfolk.  This  query  soon  led  my  friends 
upon  the  line  I  wanted  them  to  take,  and  in  five  minutes  we 
were  well  through  politics,  and  plunging  into  the  very  war. 
"  You're  a  Britisher.  Now,  all  that  they  tell  you's  darned 
lies.  We're  just  as  secesh  as  we  ever  was,]only  so  manv's 
killed  that  we  can't  fight-7-that's  all,  I  reckon."  *  "  We  ain't 
going  to  fight  the  North  and  West  again,"  said  an  ex-colonel 
of  rebel  infantry ;  "  next  time  we  fight,  'twill  be  us  and  the 
West  against  the  Yanks.  We'll  keep  the  old  flag  then,  and 
be  darned  to  them."  "  If  it  hadn't  been  for  the  politicians, 
we  shouldn't  have  seceded  at  all,  I  reckon :  we  should  just 
have  kept  the  old  flag  and  the  Constitution,  and  the  Yanks 
would  have  seceded  from  us.  Reckon  we'd  have  let  'em  go." 
"  Wall,  boys,  s'pose  we  liquor,"  closed  in  the  colonel,  shooting 
out  his  old  quid,  and  filling  in  with  another.  "  We'd  have 
fought  for  a  lifetime  if  the  cussed  Southerners  hadn't  desert- 
ed like  they  did."  I  asked  who  these  "  Southerners  "  were  to 
whom  such  disrespect  was  being  shown.  "  You  didn't  think 
Virginia  was  a  Southern  State  over  in  Britain,  did  you ;  'cause 
Virginia's  a  Border  State,  sir.  We  didn't  go  to  secede  at  all ; 
it  was  them  blasted  Southerners  that  brought  it  on  us.  First, 
they  wouldn't  give  a  command  to  General  Robert  E.  Lee, 
then  they  made  us  do  all  the  fighting  for  'em,  and  then,  when 
the  pinch  came,  they  left  us  in  the  lurch.  Why,  sir,  I  saw 
three  Mississippi  regiments  surrender  without  a  blow — yes, 
sir:  that's  right  down  good  whisky;  jess  you  sample  it." 
Here  the  steam-whistle  of  the  Saratoga  sounded,  with  its  deep 
bray.  "  Reckon  you'll  have  to  hurry  up  to  make  connections," 
said  one  of  my  new  friends,  and  I  hurried  off,  not  without  a 
fear  lest  some  of  the  group  should  shoot  after  me,  to  avenge 
the  affront  of  my  quitting  them  before  the  mixing  of  the 
drinks.  They  were  but  a  pack  of  "  mean  whites,"  "  North 
Carolina  crackers,"  but  their  views  were  those  which  I  found 
dominant  in  all  ranks  at  Richmond,  and  up  the  country  in 
Virginia. 


20  Greater  Britain. 

After  all,  the  Southern  planters  are  not  "  The  South," 
which  for  political  purposes  is  composed  of  the  "  mean  whites," 
of  the  Irish  of  the  towns,  and  of  the  South-western  men — Mis- 
sourians,  Kentuckians,  and  Texans  —  fiercely  anti-Northern, 
without  being  in  sentiment  what  we  should  call  Southern, 
certainly  not  representatives  of  the  "  Southern  Chivalry." 
The  "  mean  whites,"  or  "  poor  trash,"  are  the  whites  Avho  are 
not  planters — members  of  the  slaveholding  race  who  never 
held  a  slave — white  men  looked  down  upon  by  the  negroes. 
It  is  a  necessary  result  of  the  despotic  government  of  one 
race  by  another  that  the  poor  members  of  the  dominant  peo- 
ple are  universally  despised :  the  "  destitute  Europeans  "  of 
Bombay,  the  "white  loafers"  of  the  Punjaub,  are  familiar 
cases.  Where  slavery  exists,  the  "  poor  trash  "  class  must 
inevitably  be  both  large  and  wretched :  primogeniture  is  nec- 
essary to  keep  the  plantations  sufficiently  great  to  allow  for 
the  payment  of  overseers  and  the  supporting  in  luxury  of  the 
planter  family,  and  younger  sons  and  their  descendants  are 
not  only  left  destitute,  but  debarred  from  earning  their  bread 
by  honest  industry,  for  in  a  slave  country  labor  is  degrading. 

The  Southern  planters  were  gentlemen,  possessed  of  many 
aristocratic  virtues,  along  with  every  aristocratic  vice ;  but  to 
each  planter  there  were  nine  "  mean  whites,"  who,  though 
grossly  ignorant,  full  of  insolence,  given  to  the  use  of  the 
knife  and  pistol  upon  the  slightest  provocation,  were,  until  the 
election  of  Lincoln  to  the  presidency,  as  completely  the  rulers 
of  America  as  they  were  afterward  the  leaders  of  the  re- 
bellion. 

At  sunset  we  started  up  the  James  on  our  way  to  City 
Point  and  Richmond,  sailing  almost  between  the  very  masts 
of  the  famous  rebel  privateer  the  Florida,  and  seeing  her  as 
she  lay  under  the  still,  gray  waters.  She  was  cut  out  from 
a  Brazilian  port,  and  when  claimed  by  the  imperial  government 
was  to  have  been  at  once  surrendered.  While  the  dispatches 
were  on  their  way  to  Norfolk,  she  was  run  into  at  her  moor- 
ings by  a  Federal  gun-boat,  and  filled  and  sank  directly. 
Friends  of  the  Confederacy  have  hinted  that  the  collision  was 
strangely  opportune ;  nevertheless,  the  fact  remains  that  the 
commander  of  the  gun-boat  was  dismissed  the  navy  for  his 
carelessness. 


Virginia.  21 

The  twilight  was  beyond  description  lovely.  The  change 
from  the  auks  and  ice-birds  of  the  Atlantic  to  the  blue-birds 
and  robins  of  Virginia  was  not  more  sudden  than  that  from 
winter  to  tropical  warmth  and  sensuous  indolence ;  but  the 
scenery,  too,  of  the  river  is  beautiful  in  its  very  changeless- 
ness.  Those  who  can  see  no  beauty  but  in  boldness,  might 
call  the  James  as  monotonous  as  the  Lower  Loire. 

After  wreeks  of  bitter  cold,  warm  evenings  favor  meditation. 
The  soft  air,  the  antiquity  of  the  forest,  the  languor  of  the 
sunset  breeze,  all  dispose  to  dream  and  sleep.  That  oak  has 
seen  Powhatan ;  the  founders  of  Jamestown  may  have  point- 
ed at  that  grand  old  sycamore.  In  this  drowsy  humor,  we 
sighted  the  far-famed  batteries  of  Newport  News,  and,  turn- 
ing in  to  berth  or  hammock,  lay  all  night  at  City  Point,  near 
Petersburg. 

A  little  before  sunrise  we  wreighed  again,  and  sought  a 
passage  through  the  tremendous  Confederate  "  obstructions." 
Rows  of  iron  skeletons,  the  frame-wrorks  of  the  Avhcels  of 
sunken  steamers,  showed  above  the  stream,  casting  gaunt 
shadows  westward,  and  varied  only  by  here  and  there  a  bat- 
tered smoke-stack  or  a  spar.  The  whole  of  the  steamers  that 
had  plied  upon  the  James  and  the  canals  before  the  war  wTere 
lying  here  in  rows,  sunk  lengthwise  along  the  stream.  Two  in 
the  middle  of  each  row  had  been  raised  to  let  the  Government 
vessels  pass,  but  in  the  heat-mist  and  faint  light  the  naviga- 
tion was  most  difficult.  For  five-and-twenty  miles  the  rebel 
forts  were  as  thick  as  the  hills  and  points  allowed ;  yet,  in 
spite  of  booms  and  bars,  of  sunken  ships,  of  batteries  and 
torpedoes,  the  Federal  Monitors  once  forced  their  Avay  to  Fort 
Darling,  in  the  outer  works  of  Richmond.  I  remembered 
these  things  a  few  weeks  later,  when  General  Grant's  first 
words  to  me  at  Washington  were,  "  Glad  to  meet  you.  What 
have  you  seen  ?"  "  The  Capitol."  "  Go  at  once  and  see  the 
Monitors."  He  afterward  said  to  me,  in  words  that  photo- 
graph not  only  the  Monitors,  but  Grant,  "  You  can  batter 
away  at  those  things  for  a  month,  and  do  no  good." 

At  Dutch  Gap  we  came  suddenly  upon  a  curious  scene. 
The  river  flowed  toward  us  down  a  long  straight  reach,  bound- 
ed by  a  lofty  hill  crowned  with  tremendous  earth-works ;  but 
through  a  deep  trench  or  cleft,  hardly  fifty  yards  in  length, 


22  Greater  Britain. 

upon  our  right,  we  could  see  the  stream  running  with  violence 
in  a  direction  parallel  with  our  course.  The  hills  about  the 
gully  were  hollowed  out  into  caves  and  bomb-proofs,  evident- 
ly meant  as  shelters  from  vertical  fire,  but  the  rough  graves 
of  a  vast  cemetery  showed  that  the  protection  was  sought  in 
vain.  Forests  of  crosses  of  unpainted  wood  rose  upon  every 
acre  of  flat  ground.  On  the  peninsula,  all  but  made  an  island 
by  the  cleft,  was  a  grove  of  giant  trees,  leafless,  barkless,  dead, 
and  blanched  by  a  double  change  in  the  level  of  the  stream. 
There  is  no  sight  so  sad  as  that  of  a  drowned  forest,  with  a 
turkey-buzzard  on  each  bough.  On  the  bank  upon  our  left 
was  an  iron  scaffold,  eight  or  ten  stories  high — "Butler's 
Lookout,"  as  the  cleft  was  "  Butler's  Dutch  Gap  Canal."  The 
canal,  unfinished  in  war,  is  now  to  be  completed  at  state  ex- 
pense for  purposes  of  trade. 

As  we  rounded  the  extremity  of  the  peninsula,  an  eagle 
was  seen  to  light  upon  a  tree.  From  every  portion  of  the 
ship — main-deck,  hurricane-deck,  lower-deck  ports — revolvers 
ready  capped  and  loaded  were  brought  to  bear  upon  the 
bird,  which  sheered  off  unharmed  amid  a  storm  of  bullets. 
After  this  incident,  I  was  careful  in  my  political  discussions 
with  my  shipmates  ;  disarmament  in  the  Confederacy  had 
clearly  not  been  extended  to  private  weapons. 

The  outer  and  inner  lines  of  fortifications  passed,  wc  came 
in  view  of  a  many-steepled  town,  with  domes  and  spires  recall- 
ing Oxford,  hanging  on  a  bank  above  a  crimson-colored,  foam- 
ing stream.  In  ten  minutes  we  were  alongside  the  wharf  at 
Richmond,  and  in  half  an  hour  safely  housed  in  the  "  Ex- 
change "  Hotel,  kept  by  the  Messrs.  Carrington,  of  whom  the 
father  was  a  private,  the  son  a  colonel,  in  the  rebel  volun- 
teers. 

The  next  day,  while  the  works  and  obstructions  on  the 
James  were  still  fresh  in  my  mind,  I  took  train  to  Petersburg, 
the  city  the  capture  of  which  by  Grant  was  the  last  blow 
struck  by  the  North  at  the  melting  forces  of  the  Confederacy. 

The  line  showed  the  war :  here  and  there  the  track,  torn  up 
in  Northern  raids,  had  barely  been  repaired ;  the  bridges 
were  burnt  and  broken;  the  rails  worn  down  to  an  iron 
thread.  The  joke  "  on  board,"  as  they  say  here  for  "  in  the 
train,"  was  that  the  engine-drivers  down  the  line  are  tolcra- 


Virginia.  23 

bly  'cute  men,  who,  when  the  rails  are  altogether  worn  away, 
understand  how  to  "  go  it  on  the  bare  wood,"  and  who  at  all 
times  "  know  where  to  jump." 

From  the  window  of  the  car  we  could  see  that  in  the  coun- 
try there  were  left  no  mules,  no  horses,  no  roads,  no  men. 
The  solitude  is  not  all  owing  to  the  war.  In  the  whole  five- 
anil-twenty  miles  from  Richmond  to  Petersburg  there  was  be- 
fore the  war  but  it  single  station ;  in  New  England  your  pas- 
sage-card often  gives  a  station  in  every  two  miles.  A  careful 
look  at  the  underwood  on  either  side  the  line  showed  that  this 
forest  is  not  primeval,  that  all  this  country  had  once  been 
plowed. 

Virginia  stands  first  among  the  States  for  natural  advanta- 
ges :  in  climate  she  is  unequalled  ;  her  soil  is  fertile ;  her  min- 
eral wealth  in  coal,  copper,  gold,  and  iron,  enormous  and  well 
placed  ;  her  rivers  good,  and  her  great  harbor  one  of  the  best 
in  the  world.  Virginia  has  been  planted  more  than  250  years, 
and  is  as  large  as  England,  yet  has  a  free  population  of  only 
a  million.  In  every  kind  of  production  she  is  miserably  infe- 
rior to  Missouri  or  Ohio,  in  most  inferior  also  to  the  infant 
States  of  Michigan  and  Illinois.  Only  a  quarter  of  her  soil  is 
under  cultivation,  to  half  that  of  poor  starved  New  England, 
and  the  mines  are  deserted  which  were  worked  by  the  very 
Indians  who  were  driven  from  the  land  as  savages  a  hundred 
years  ago. 

There  is  no  surer  test  of  the  condition  of  a  country  than 
the  state  of  its  highways.  In  driving  on  the  main  roads  round 
Richmond,  in  visiting  the  scene  of  M'Clellan's  great  defeat 
on  the  Chickahominy  at  Mechanicsville  and  Malvern  Hill,  I 
myself  and  an  American  gentleman  who  was  with  me  had  to 
get  out  and  lay  the  planks  upon  the  bridges,  and  then  sit  upon 
them,  to  keep  them  down  while  the  black  coachman  drove 
across.  The  best  roads  in  Virginia  are  but  ill-kept  "  cordu- 
roys ;"  but,  bad  as  are  these,  "  plank  roads  "  over  which  artil- 
lery has  passed,  knocking  out  every  other  plank,  are  worse  by 
far;  yet  such  is  the  main  road  from  Richmond  toward  the 
West. 

There  is  not  only  a  scarcity  of  roads,  but  of  railroads.  A 
comparison  of  the  railway  system  of  Illinois  and  Indiana  with 
the  two  lines  of  Kentucky,  or  the  one  of  Western  Virginia  or 


24  Greater  Britain. 

Louisiana,  is  a  comparison  of  the  South  -with  the  North,  of 
slavery  with  freedom.  Virginia  shows  already  the  decay  of 
age,  but  is  blasted  by  slavery  rather  than  by  war. 

Passing  through  Petersburg,  the  streets  of  which  were  gay 
with  the  feathery-brown  blooms  of  the  Venetian  sumac,  but 
almost  deserted  by  human  beings,  who  have  not  returned  to 
the  city  since  they  were  driven  out  by  the  shot  and  shell  of 
which  their  houses  show  the  scars,  we  were  soon  in  the  rebel 
works.  There  are  sixty  miles  of  these  works  in  all,  line  with- 
in line,  three  deep:  alternations  of  wind-pits  and  sand-heaps, 
with  here  and  there  a  tree-trunk  pierced  for  riilemen,  and 
everywhere  a  double  row  of  chevaxix-de-frise.  The  forts  near- 
est this  point  were  named  by  their  rebel  occupants  Fort  Hell 
and  Fort  Damnation.  Tremendous  works,  but  it  needed  no 
lung  interview  with  Grant  to  understand  their  capture.  I  had 
not  been  ten  minutes  in  his  office  at  Washington  before  I  saw 
that  the  secret  of  his  unvarying  success  lay  in  his  unflinching 
determination ;  there  is  pith  in  the  American  conceit  which 
reads  in  his  initials,  "  U.  S.  G.,"  "  Unconditional-surrender 
Grant." 

The  works  defending  Richmond,  hardly  so  strong  as  those  . 
of  Petersburg,  were  attacked  in  a  novel  manner  in  the  third 
year  of  the  war.  A  strong  body  of  Federal  cavalry  on  a  raid, 
unsupported  by  infantry  or  guns,  came  suddenly  by  night 
upon  the  outer  lines  of  Richmond  on  the  west.  Something 
had  led  them  to  believe  that  the  rebels  Were  not  in  force,  and 
with  the  strange  aimless  daring  that  animated  both  parties 
during  the  rebellion,  they  rode  straight  in  along  the  Minding 
road  unchallenged,  and  came  up  to  the  inner  lines.  There 
they  were  met  by  a  volley  which  emptied  a  few  saddles,  and 
they  retired,  without  even  stopping  to  spike  the  guns  in  the 
outer  works.  Had  they  known  enough  of  the  troops  opposed 
to  them  to  have  continued  to  advance,  they  might  have  taken 
Richmond,  and  held  it  long  enough  to  have  captured  the  rebel 
President  and  Senate,  and  burned  the  great  iron-works  and 
ships.  The  whole  of  the  rebel  army  had  gone  north,  and  even 
the  home  guard  was  camped  out  on  the  Chickahominy.  The 
troops  who  fired  the  volley  were  a  company  of  the  "  iron-works 
battalion,"  boys  employed  at  the  founderies,  not  one  of  whom 
had  ever  fired  a  rifle  before  this  night.     They  confessed  them- 


Virginia.  25 

selves  that  "  one  minute  more,  and  they'd  have  run ;"  but  the 
volley  just  stopped  the  enemy  in  time. 

The  spot  where  we  first  struck  the  rebel  lines  was  that 
known  as  the  Crater — the  funnel-shaped  cavity  formed  when 
Grant  sprang  his  famous  mine.  Fifteen  hundred  men  are  bur- 
ied in  the  hollow  itself,  and  the  bones  of  those  smothered  by 
the  falling  earth  are  working  through  the  soil.  Five  thousand 
negro  troops  were  killed  in  this  attack,  and  are  buried  round 
the  hollow  where  they  died,  fighting  as  gallantly  as  they  fought 
everywhere  throughout  the  war.  It  is  a  singular  testimony 
to  the  continuousness  of  the  fire,  that  the  still  remaining  sub- 
terranean passages  show  that  in  countermining  the  rebels  came 
once  within  three  feet  of  the  mine,  yet  failed  to  hear  the  work- 
ing-parties. Thousands  of  old  army-shoes  were  lying  on  the 
earth,  and  negro  boys  were  digging  up  bullets  for  old  lead. 

Within  eighty  yards  of  the  Crater  are  the  Federal  invest- 
ing lines,  on  which  the  trumpet-flower  of  our  gardens  was 
growing  wild,  in  deep,  rich  masses.  The  negroes  told  me  not 
to  gather  it,  because  they  believe  it  scalds  the  hand.  They 
call  it  "  poison-plant,"  or  "  blister-weed."  The  blue-birds  and 
scarlet  tannagers  were  playing  about  the  horn-shaped  flowers. 

Just  within  Grant's  earth- works  are  the  ruins  of  an  ancient 
church,  built,  it  is  said,  with  bricks  that  were  brought  by  the 
first  colonists  from  England  in  1614.  About  Norfolk,  about 
Petersburg,  and  the  Shenandoah  Valley,  you  can  not  ride  twen- 
ty miles  through  the  Virginian  forest  without  bursting  in  upon 
some  glade  containing  a  quaint  old  church,  or  a  creeper-cover- 
ed roofless  palace  of  the  Culpeppers,  the  Randolphs,  or  the 
Scotts.  The  county  names  have  in  them  all  a  history.  Tak- 
ing the  letter  "  B  "  alone,  we  have  Barbour,  Bath,  Bedford, 
Berkeley,  Boone,  Botetourt,  Braxton,  Brooke,  Brunswick,  Bu- 
chanan, Buckingham.  A  dozen  counties  in  the  State  are  named 
from  kings  or  princes.  The  slave-owning  cavaliers  whose 
names  the  remainder  bear  are  the  men  most  truly  guilty  of 
the  late  attempt  made  by  their  descendants  to  create  an  em- 
pire founded  on  disloyalty  and  oppression;  but  within  sight 
of  this  old  church  of  theirs  at  Petersburg,  thirty-three  miles  of 
Federal  outworks  stand  as  a  monument  of  how  the  attempt 
was  crushed  by  the  children  of  their  New  England  brother- 
colonists. 

B 


26  Greater  Britain. 

The  names  of  streams  and  hamlets  in  Virginia  have  often  a 
quaint  English  ring.  On  the  Potomac,  near  Harper's  Ferry, 
I  once  came  upon  "  Sir  John's  Run."  Upon  my  asking  a 
tall,  gaunt  fellow  who  was  fishing  whether  this  was  the  spot 
on  which  the  Knight  of  Windsor  "  larded  the  lean  earth,"  I 
got  for  sole  answer, "  Wall,  don't  know  'bout  that,  but  it's  a 
mighty  fine  spot  for  yellow-fin  trout."  The  entry  to  Virginia 
is  characteristic.  You  sail  between  capes  named  from  the 
sons  of  James  I.,  and  have  fronting  you  the  estuaries  of  two 
rivers  called  after  the  king  and  the  Duke  of  York. 

The  old  "  F.  F.  V.'s,"  the  first  families  of  Virginia,  whose 
founders  gave  these  monarchic  names  to  the  rivers  and  coun- 
ties of  the  State,  are  far  off  now  in  Texas  and  California — 
those,  that  is,  which  were  not  extinct  before  the  war.  The 
tenth  Lord  Fairfax  keeps  a  tiny  ranch  near  San  Francisco; 
some  of  the  chief  Denmans  are  also  to  be  found  in  California. 
In  all  such  cases  of  which  I  heard,  the  emigration  took  place 
before  the  war ;  Northern  conquest  could  not  be  made  use  of 
as  a  plea  whereby  to  escape  the  reproaches  due  to  the  slave- 
owning  system.  There  is  a  stroke  of  justice  in  the  fact  that 
the  Virginian  oligarchy  have  ruined  themselves  in  ruining 
their  State  ;  but  the  gaming-hells  of  Farobankopolis,  as  Rich- 
mond once  was  called,  have  much  for  which  to  answer. 

When  the  "  burnt  district "  comes  to  be  rebuilt,  Richmond 
will  be  the  most  beautiful  of  all  the  Atlantic  cities  ;  while  the 
water-power  of  the  rapids  of  the  James  and  its  situation  at 
the  junction  of  canal  and  river,  secure  for  it  a  prosperous  fu- 
ture. 

The  superb  position  of  the  State-house  (which  formed  the 
rebel  Capitol),  on  the  brow  of  a  long-hill,  whence  it  overhangs 
the  city  and  the  James,  has  in  it  something  of  satire.  The 
Parliament-house  of  George  Washington's  own  State,  the 
State-house,  contains  the  famed  statue  set  up  by  the  general 
assembly  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Virginia  to  the  hero's  mem- 
ory. Without  the  building  stands  the  still  more  noteworthy 
bronze  statue  of  the  first  President,  erected  jointly  by  all  the 
States  in  the  then  Union.  That  such  monuments  should  over- 
look the  battle-fields  of  the  war  provoked  by  the  secession  from 
the  Union  of  Washington's  loved  Virginia,  is  a  fact  full  of 
the  grim  irony  of  history. 


The  Negro.  27 

Hollywood,  the  cemetery  of  Richmond,  is  a  place  full  of 
touching  sad  suggestions,  and  very  beautiful,  with  deep  shades 
and  rippling  streams.  During  the  war,  there  were  hospitals 
in  Richmond  for  20,000  men,  and  "  always  full,"  they  say. 
The  Richmond  men  who  were  killed  in  battle  were  buried 
where  they  fell,  but  8000  who  died  in  hospital  are  buried  here, 
and  over  them  is  placed  a  wooden  cross,  with  the  inscription 
in  black  paint,  "  Dead,  but  not  forgotten."  In  another  spot 
lie  the  Union  dead,  under  the  shadow  of  the  flag  for  which 
they  died. 

From  Monroe's  tomb  the  evening  view  is  singularly  soft 
and  calm ;  the  quieter  and  calmer  for  the  drone  in  which  are 
mingled  the  trills  of  the  mocking-bird,  the  hoarse  croaking  of 
the  bull-frog,  the  hum  of  the  myriad  fire-flies,  that  glow  like 
summer  lightning  among  the  trees ;  the  distant  roar  of  the 
river,  of  which  the  rich  red  water  can  still  be  seen,  beaten  by 
the  rocks  into  a  rosy*  foam. 

With  the  moment's  dullness  of  the  sunset  breeze,  the  gold- 
en glory  of  the  heavens  fades  into  gray,  and  there  comes  quick- 
ly over  them  the  solemn  blueness  of  the  Southern  night. 
Thoughts  are  springing  up  of  the  many  thousand  unnamed 
graves,  where  the  rebel  soldiers  lie  unknown,  when  the  Federal 
drums  in  Richmond  begin  sharply  beating  the  rappel. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE    NEGRO. 

In  the  back  country  of  Virginia,  and  on  the  borders  of 
North  Carolina,  it  becomes  clear  that  our  common  English 
notions  of  the  negro  and  of  slavery  are  nearer  the  truth  than 
common  notions  often  are.  The  London  Christy  Minstrels 
are  not  more  given  to  bursts  of  laughter  of  the  form  "  Yah  ! 
3  all !"  than  are  the  plantation-hands.  The  negroes  upon  the 
Virginian  farms  are  not  maligned  by  those  who  represent 
them  as  delighting  in  the  contrasts  of  ci'imson  and  yellow,  or 
emerald  and  sky-blue.  I  have  seen  them  on  a  Sunday  after- 
noon, dressed  in  scarlet  waistcoats  and  gold-laced  cravats,  re- 
turning hurriedly  from  "  meetin',"  to  dance  break-downs,  and 


28  Greater  Britain. 

grin  from  ear  to  car  for  hours  at  a  time.  "What  better  should 
Ave  expect  from  men  to  whom  until  just  now  it  was  forbidden, 
under  tremendous  penalties,  to  teach  their  letters  ? 

Nothing  can  force  the  planters  to  treat  negro  freedom  save 
from  the  comic  side.  To  them  the  thing  is  too  new  for 
thought,  too  strange  for  argument ;  the  ridiculous  lies  on  the 
surface,  and  to  this  they  turn  as  a  relief.  When  I  asked  a 
planter  how  the  blacks  prospered  under  freedom,  his  answer 
Mas,  " Ours  don't  much  like  it.  You  see,  it  necessitates  mo- 
nogamy. If  I  talk  about  the  '  responsibilities  of  freedom,' 
Sambo  says,  'Dunno  'bout  that;  please  Mass'  George,  me 
want  two  wife.' "  Another  planter  tells  me  that  the  only 
change  that  he  can  see  in  the  condition  of  the  negroes  since 
they  have  been  free,  is  that  formerly  the  supervision  of  the 
overseer  forced  them  occasionally  to  be  clean,  whereas  now 
nothing  on  earth  can  make  them  wash.  He  says  that,  writing 
lately  to  his  agent,  he  received  an  answer  to  which  there  was 
the  following  postscript :  "  You  ain't  sent  no  sope.  You  had 
better  send  sope  :  niggers  is  certainly  needing  sope." 

It  is  easy  to  treat  the  negro  question  in  this  way;  easy, 
on  the  other  hand,  to  assert  that  since  history  fails  us  as  a  . 
guide  to  the  future  of  the  emancipated  blacks,  we  should  see 
what  time  will  bring,  and  meanwhile  set  down  negroes  as  a 
monster  class  of  which  nothing  is  yet  known,  and,  like  the 
compilers  of  the  Catalan  map,  say  of  places  of  which  we  have 
no  knowledge,  "  Here  be  giants,  cannibals,  and  negroes."  As 
long  as  we  possess  Jamaica,  and  are  masters  upon  the  African 
west  coast,  the  negro  question  is  one  of  moment  to  ourselves. 
It  is  one,  too,  of  mightier  import,  for  it  is  bound  up  with  the 
future  of  the  English  in  America.  It  is  by  no  means  a  ques- 
tion to  be  passed  over  as  a  joke.  There  are  five  millions  of 
negroes  in  the  United  States;  juries  throughout  ten  States  of 
the  Union  are  mainly  chosen  from  the  black  race.  The  mat- 
ter is  not  only  serious,  but  full  of  interest,  political,  ethno- 
logical, historic. 

In  the  South  you  must  take  nothing  upon  trust,  believe 
nothing  you  are  told.  Nowhere  in  the  world  do  "  facts  "  ap- 
pear so  differently  to  those  who  view  them  through  spectacles 
of  yellow  or  of  rose.  The  old  planters  tell  you  that  all  is 
ruin,  that  they  have  but  half  the  hands  they  need,  and  from 


The  Negro.  29 

each  hand  but  a  half-day's  work  ;  the  new  men,  with  North- 
ern energy  and  Northern  capital,  tell  you  that  they  get  on 
very  well. 

The  old  Southern  planters  find  it  hard  to  rid  themselves  of 
their  traditions ;  they  can  not  understand  free  blacks,  and 
slavery  makes  not  only  the  slaves  but  the  masters  shiftless. 
They  have  no  cash,  and  the  Metayer  system  gives  rise  to  the 
suspicion  of  some  fraud,  for  the  negroes  are  very  distrustful 
of  the  honesty  of  their  former  masters. 

The  worst  of  the  evils  that  must  inevitably  grow  out  of 
the  sudden  emancipation  of  millions  of  slaves  have  not  shown 
themselves  as  yet,  in  consequence  of  the  great  amount  of  work 
that  has  to  be  done  in  the  cities  of  the  South,  in  repairing 
the  ruin  caused  during  the  war  by  fire  and  want  of  care,  and 
in  building  places  of  business  for  the  Northern  capitalists. 
The  negroes  of  Virginia  and  North  Carolina  have  flocked  down 
to  the  towns  and  ports  by  the  thousand,  and  find  in  Norfolk, 
Richmond,  Wilmington,  and  Fortress  Monroe  employment 
for  the  moment.  Their  absence  from  the  plantations  makes 
labor  dear  up  country,  and  this  in  itself  tempts  the  negroes 
who  remain  on  land  to  work  sturdily  for  wages.  Seven  dol- 
lars a  month — at  the  then  rate  equal  to  one  pound — with 
board  and  lodging,  were  being  paid  to  black  field-hands  on 
the  corn  and  tobacco  farms  near  Richmond.  It  is  when  the 
city  works  are  over  that  the  pressure  will  come,  and  it  will 
probably  end  in  the  blacks  largely  pushing  northward,  and 
driving  the  Irish  out  of  hotel  service  at  New  York  and  Bos- 
ton, as  they  have  done  in  Philadelphia  and  St.  Louis. 

Already  the  negroes  are  beginning  to  ask  for  land,  and 
they  complain  loudly  that  none  of  the  confiscated  lands  have 
been  assigned  to  them.  "  Ef  yer  dun  gib  us  de  land,  reckon 
de  ole  massas  '11  starb  de  niggahs,"  was  a  plain,  straightfor- 
ward summary  of  the  negro  view  of  the  negro  qiiestion,  given 
me  by  a  white-bearded  old  "  uncle  "  in  Richmond,  and  backed 
by  every  black  man  within  hearing  in  a  chorus  of  "  Dat's  true, 
for  shore ;"  but  I  found  up  the  country  that  the  planters  are 
afraid  to  let  the  negroes  own  or  farm  for  themselves  the 
smallest  plot  of  land,  for  fear  that  they  should  sell  ten  times 
as  much  as  they  grew,  stealing  their  "  crop  "  from  the  grana- 
ries of  their  employers. 


30  Greater  Britain. 

Upon  a  farm  near  Petersburg,  owned  by  a  Northern  capi- 
talist, I  was  told  that  1000  acres,  which  before  emancipation 
had  been  tilled  by  100  slaves,  now  needed  but  forty  freedmen 
for  its  cultivation ;  but  when  I  reached  it,  I  found  that  the 
former  number  included  old  people  and  women,  while  the 
forty  wore  all  hale  men.  The  men  were  paid  upon  the  tally 
system.  A  card  was  given  them  for  each  day's  work,  which 
was  accepted  at  the  plantation  store  in  payment  for  goods 
supplied,  and  at  the  end  of  the  month  money  was  paid  for  the 
remaining  tickets.  The  planters  say  that  the  field-hands  will 
not  support  their  old  people ;  but  this  means  only  that,  like 
white  folk,  they  try  to  make  as  much  money  as  they  can,  and 
know  that  if  they  plead  the  wants  of  their  own  wives  and 
children,  the  whites  will  keep  their  old  people. 

That  the  negro  slaves  were  lazy,  thriftless,  unchaste,  thieves, 
is  true  ;  but  it  is  as  slaves,  and  not  as  negroes,  that  they  were 
all  these  things ;  and,  after  all,  the  effects  of  slavery  upon  the 
slave  are  less  terrible  than  its  effects  upon  the  master.  The 
moral  condition  to  which  the  planter  class  had  been  brought 
by  slavery  shows  out  plainly  in  the  speeches  of  the  rebel  lead- 
ers. Alexander  H.  Stephens,  Vice-president  of  the  Confed- 
eracy, declared  in  1861  that  "  Slavery  is  the  natural  and  mor- 
al condition  of  the  negro.  ...  I  can  not  permit  myself  to 
doubt,"  he  went  on,  "  the  ultimate  success  of  a  full  recogni- 
tion of  this  principle  throughout  the  civilized  and  enlighten- 
ed world  .  .  .  . ;  negro  slavery  is  in  its  infancy." 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  American  negroes  will 
justify  the  hopes  of  their  best  friends:  they  have  made  the 
best  of  every  chance  that  has  been  given  them  yet ;  they  made 
good  soldiers,  they  are  eager  to  leam  their  letters,  they  are 
steady  at  their  work.  In  Barbadoes  they  are  industrious  and 
well-conducted  ;  in  La  Plata  they  arc  exemplary  citizens.  In 
America,  as  yet,  the  colored  laborer  has  had  no  motive  to  be 
industrious. 

General  Grant  assured  me  of  the  great  aptness  at  soldier- 
ing shown  by  the  negro  troops.  In  battle  they  displayed  ex- 
traordinary courage,  but  if  their  officers  were  picked  off  they 
could  not  stand  a  charge  ;  no  more,  he  said,  could  their  South- 
ern masters.  The  power  of  standing  firm  after  the  loss  of 
leaders  is  possessed  only  by  regiments  where  every  private  is 


The  Negko.  31 

.is  good  as  his  captain  and  colonel,  such  as  the  North-western 
and  New  England  volunteers. 

Before  I  left  Richmond,  I  had  one  morning  found  my  way 
into  a  school  for  the  younger  blacks.  There  were  as  many 
present  as  the  forms  would  hold — sixty,  perhaps,  in  all — and 
three  wounded  New  England  soldiers,  with  pale,  thin  faces, 
were  patiently  teaching  them  to  write,  The  boys  seemed 
quick  and  apt  enough,  but  they  were  veiy  raw — only  a  week 
or  two  in  the  school.  Since  the  time  when  Oberlin  first  pro- 
claimed the  potential  equality  of  the  race,  by  admitting  ne- 
groes as  freely  as  white  men  and  women  to  the  college,  the 
negroes  have  never  been  backward  to  learn. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  negro  is  wanting  in  abili- 
ties of  a  certain  kind.  Even  in  the  imbecility  of  the  Congo 
dance  we  note  his  unrivalled  mimetic  powers.  The  religious 
side  of  the  negro  character  is  full  of  weird  suggestiveness  ; 
but  superstition,  everywhere  the  handmaid  of  ignorance,  is 
rife  among  the  black  plantation-hands.  It  is  thought  that  the 
punishment  with  which  the  shameful  rites  of  Obi -worship 
have  been  visited  has  proved,  even  in  the  city  of  New  Orleans,  in- 
sufficient to  prevent  them.  Charges  of  witchcraft  are  as  com- 
mon in  Virginia  as  in  Orissa  :  in  the  Carolinas,  as  in  Central 
India,  the  use  of  poison  is  often  sought  to  work  out  the  events 
foretold  by  some  noted  sorceress.  In  no  direction  can  the  mat- 
ter be  followed  out  to  its  conclusions  without  bringing  us  face 
to  face  with  the  sad  fact,  that  the  faults  of  the  plantation  negro 
are  every  one  of  them  traceable  to  the  vices  of  the  slavery  sys- 
tem, and  that  the  Americans  of  to-day  are  suffering  beyond 
measure  for  evils  for  which  our  forefathers  are  responsible. 
We  ourselves  are  not  guiltless  of  wrong-doing  in  this  matter : 
if  it  is  still  impossible  openly  to  advocate  slavery  in  England, 
it  has,  at  least,  become  a  habit  persistently  to  write  down  free- 
dom. "We  are  no  longer  told  that  God  made  the  blacks  to  be 
slaves,  but  we  are  bade  remember  that  they  can  not  prosper 
under  emancipation.  All  mention  of  Barbadoes  is  suppressed, 
but  we  have  daily  homilies  on  the  condition  of  Jamaica.  The 
negro  question  in  America  is  briefly  this :  Is  there,  on  the 
one  hand,  reason  to  fear  that,  dollars  applied  to  land  decreas- 
ing while  black  mouths  to  be  fed  increase,  the  Southern  States 
will  become  an  American  Jamaica?     Is  there, on  the  other 


82  Greater  Britain. 

hand,  ground  for  the  hope  that  the  negroes  may  be  found  not 
incapable  of  the  citizenship  of  the  United  States  ?  The  form- 
er of  these  two  questions  is  the  more  difficult,  and,  to  some  ex- 
tent, involves  the  latter :  can  cotton,  can  sugar,  can  rice,  can 
coffee,  can  tobacco,  be  raised  by  white  field-hands  ?  If  not, 
can  they  be  raised  with  profit  by  black  free  labor  ?  Can  co- 
<  operative  planting,  directed  by  negro  overlookers,  possibly  suc- 
ceed, or  must  the  farm  be  ruled  by  white  capitalists,  agents, 
and  overseers  ? 

It  is  asserted  that  the  negro  will  not  work  without  compul- 
sion, but  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  European.  There  is 
compulsion  of  many  kinds.  The  emancipated  negro  may 
still  be  forced  to  work — forced  as  the  white  man  is  forced  in 
this  and  other  lands  by  the  alternative,  work  or  starve  !  This 
forcing,  however,  may  not  be  confined  to  that  which  the  laws 
of  natural  increase  lead  us  to  expect;  it  may  be  stimulated  by 
bounties  on  immigration. 

The  negro  is  not,  it  would  seem,  to  have  a  monopoly  of 
Southern  labor  in  this  continent.  This  week  we  hear  of  three 
shiploads  of  Chinese  coolies  as  just  landed  in  Louisiana ;  and 
the  air  is  thick  with  rumors  of  labor  from  Bombay,  from  Cal- 
cutta, from  the  Pacific  Islands — of  Eastern  labor  in  its  hundred 
shapes — not  to  speak  of  competition  with  the  whites,  now  com 
mencing  with  the  German  immigration  into  Tennessee. 

The  berries  of  this  country  are  so  large,  so  many,  so  full  of 
juice,  that  alone  they  form  a  never-failing  source  of  nourish- 
ment to  an  idle  population.  Three  kinds  of  cranberries, 
American,  pied,  and  English  ;  two  blackberries,  huckleberries, 
high-bush  and  low-bush  blueberries — the  latter  being  the  En- 
glish bilberry — are  among  the  best  known  of  the  native  fruits. 
No  one  in  this  country,  however  idle  he  be,  need  starve.  If  he 
goes  farther  south,  he  has  the  banana,  the  true  staff  of  life. 

The  terrible  results  of  the  plentiful  possession  of  this  tree 
are  seen  in  Ceylon,  at  Panama,  in  the  coast-lands  of  Mexico,  at 
Auckland,  in  New  Zealand.  At  Pitcairn's  Island  the  plantain 
grove  has  beaten  the  missionary  from  the  field  ;  there  is  much 
lip-Christianity,  but  no  practice  to  be  got  from  a  people  who 
possess  the  fatal  plant.  The  much-abused  cocoanut  can  not 
come  near  it  as  a  devil's  agent.  The  cocoa-palm  is  confined 
to  a  few  islands  and  coast  tracts — confined,  too,  to  the  tropics 


The  Negro.  33 

and  sea-level ;  the  plantain  and  banana  extend  over  seventy 
degrees  of  latitude,  down  to  Botany  Bay  and  King  George's 
Sound,  and  up  as  far  north  as  the  Khyber  Pass.  The  palm 
asks  labor — not  much,  it  is  true ;  but  still  a  few  days'  hard 
work  in  the  year  in  trenching,  and  climbing  after  the  nuts. 
The  plantain  grows  as  a  weed,  and  hangs  down  its  branches 
of  ripe  tempting-fruit  into  your  lap,  as  you  lie  in  its  cool 
shade.  The  cocoanut-tree  has  a  hundred  uses,  and  urges  man 
to  work  to  make  spirit  from  its  juice,  ropes,  clothes,  matting, 
bags  from  its  fibre,  oil  from  the  pulp ;  it  creates  an  export 
trade  which  appeals  to  almost  all  men  by  their  weakest  side, 
in  offering  large  and  quick  returns  for  a  little  work.  John 
Ross's  "  Isle  of  Cocoas,"  to  the  west  of  Java  and  south  of 
Ceylon,  yields  him  heavy  gains ;  there  are  profits  to  bo  made 
upon  the  Liberian  coast,  and  even  in  Southern  India  and  Cey- 
lon. The  plantain  will  make  nothing ;  you  can  eat  it  raw  or 
fried,  and  that  is  all ;  you  can  eat  it  every  day  of  your  life 
without  becoming  tired  of  its  taste ;  Avithout  suffering  in 
your  health,  you  can  live  on  it  exclusively.  In  the  banana 
groves  of  Florida  and  Louisiana  there  lurks  much  trouble  and 
danger  to  the  American  Free  States. 

The  negroes  have  hardly  much  chance  in  Virginia  against 
the  Northern  capitalists,  provided  with  white  labor,  but  the 
States  of  Louisiana,  Mississippi,  Florida,  and  South  Carolina 
j)romise  to  be  wholly  theirs.  Already  they  are  flocking  to 
places  in  which  they  have  a  majority  of  the  people,  and  can 
control  the  municipalities  and  defend  themselves,  if  neces- 
sary, by  force ;  but  even  if  the  Southerners  of  the  coast  desert 
their  country,  the  negroes  will  not  have  it  to  themselves,  un- 
less nature  declares  that  they  shall.  New  Englanders  will 
pour  in  with  capital  and  energy,  and  cultivate  the  land  by 
free  black  or  by  coolie  labor,  if  either  will  pay.  If  they  do 
pay,  competition  will  force  the  remaining  blacks  to  work  or 
starve. 

The  friends  of  the  negro  are  not  without  a  fear  that  the  la- 
borers will  be  too  many  for  their  work,  for,  while  the  older 
Cotton  States  appear  to  be  worn  out,  the  new,  such  as  Texas 
and  Tennessee,  will  be  reserved  by  public  opinion  to  the  whites. 
For  the  present  the  negroes  will  be  masters  in  seven  of  the 
rebel  States ;   but  in  Texas,  white  men — English,  Germans, 

B2 


34  Gkeatek  Bkitain. 

Danes — arc  growing  cotton  with  success  ;  and  in  Georgia  and 
North  Carolina,  which  contain  mountain  districts,  the  negro 
power  is  not  likely  to  be  permanent. 

We  may,  perhaps,  lay  it  down  as  a  general  principle  that, 
when  the  negro  can  light  his  way  through  opposition,  and 
stand  alone  as  a  farmer  or  laborer  without  the  aid  of  private 
or  State  charity,  then  he  should  be  protected  in  the  position 
he  has  shown  himself  worthy  to  hold,  that  of  a  free  citizen  of 
an  enlightened  and  laboring  community.  Where  it  is  found 
that  when  his  circumstances  have  ceased  to  be  exceptional  the 
negro  can  not  live  unassisted,  there  the  Federal  Government 
may  fairly  and  wisely  step  in  and  say, "  We  will  not  keep  you, 
but  Ave  will  carry  you  to  Liberia  or  to  Hayti,  if  you  will." 

It  is  clear  that  the  Southern  negroes  must  be  given  a  deci- 
sive voice  in  the  appointment  of  the  Legislatures  by  which 
they  are  to  be  ruled,  or  that  the  North  must  be  prepared  to 
back  up  by  force  of  opinion,  or,  if  need  be,  by  force  of  arms, 
the  Federal  Executive,  when  it  insists  on  the  Civil  Rights 
Bill  being  set  in  action  at  the  South.  Government  through 
the  negroes  is  the  only  way  to  avoid  government  through  an 
army,  wrhich  would  be  dangerous  to  the  freedom  of  the  North. 
It  is  safer  for  America  to  trust  her  slaves  than  to  trust  her 
rebels — safer  to  enfranchise  than  to  pardon. 

A  reading  and  writing  basis  for  the  suffrage  in  the  South- 
ern States  is  an  absurdity.  Coupled  with  pardons  to  the  reb- 
els, it  would  allow  the  "  boys  in  gray  " — the  soldiers  of  the 
Confederacy — to  control  nine  States  of  the  Union ;  it  would 
render  the  education  of  the  freedmen  hopeless.  For  the  mo- 
ment it  would  entirely  disenfranchise  the  negroes  in  six  States, 
whereas  it  is  exactly  for  the  moment  that  negro  suffrage  is  in 
these  States  necessary ;  while,  if  the  rebels  were  admitted  to 
vote,  and  the  negroes  excluded  from  the  poll,  the  Southern 
representatives,  united  with  the  Copperhead  wing  of  the  Dem- 
ocratic party,  might  prove  to  be  strong  enough  to  repudiate 
the  Federal  debt.     This  is  one  of  a  dozen  dangers. 

An  education  basis  for  the  suffrage,  though  pretended  to 
be  impartial,  would  be  manifestly  aimed  against  the  negroes, 
and  would  perpetuate  the  antipathy  of  color  to  which  the  war 
is  supposed  to  have  put  an  end.  To  education  such  a  provis- 
ion woidd  be  a  death-blow.     If  the  negroes  were  to  vote  as 


The  South.  35 

soon  as  they  could  read,  it  is  certain  that  the  planters  would 
take  good  care  that  they  never  should  read  at  all. 

That  men  should  be  able  to  examine  into  the  details  of  pol- 
itics is  not  entirely  necessary  to  the  working  of  representative 
government.  It  is  sufficient  that  they  should  be  competent  to 
select  men  to  do  it  for  them.  In  the  highest  form  of  repre- 
sentative government,  where  all  the  electors  are  both  intelli- 
gent, educated,  and  alive  to  the  politics  of  the  time,  then  the 
member  returned  must  tend  more  and  more  to  be  a  delegate. 
That  has  always  been  the  case  with  the  Northern  and  Western 
members  in  America,  but  never  with  those  returned  by  the 
Southern  States ;  and  so  it  will  continue,  whether  the  South- 
ern elections  be  decided  by  negroes  or  by  "  mean  whites." 

In  Warren  County,  Mississippi,  near  Vicksburg,  is  a  plan- 
tation which  belongs  to  Joseph  Davis,  the  brother  of  the  rebel 
President.  This  he  has  leased  to  Mr.  Montgomery — once  his 
slave — in  order  that  an  association  of  blacks  may  be  formed 
to  cultivate  the  plantation  on  co-operative  principles.  It  is  to 
be  managed  by  a  council,  to  be  elected  by  the  community  at 
large,  and  a  voluntary  poor-rate  and  embankment-rate  are  to 
be  levied  on  the  people  by  themselves. 

It  is  only  a  year  since  the  termination  of  the  war,  and  the 
negroes  are  already  in  possession  of  schools,  village  corpora- 
tions, of  the  Metayer  system,  of  co-operative  farms  ;  all  this 
tells  of  rapid  advance,  and  the  conduct  and  circulation  of  the 
JVao  Orleans  Tribune,  edited  and  published  by  negroes,  and 
selling  10,000  copies  daily,  and  another  10,000  of  the  weekly 
issue,  speaks  well  for  the  progress  of  the  blacks.  If  the 
Montgomery  experiment  succeeds,  their  future  is  secure. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  SOUTH. 

The  political  forecasts  and  opinions  which  were  given  me 
upon  plantations  were,  in  a  great  measure,  those  indicated  in 
my  talk  with  the  Norfolk  "  loafers."  On  the  history  of  the 
commencement  of  the  rebellion  there  was  singular  unanimity. 
"  Virginia  never  meant  to  quit  the  Union  ;  we  were  cheated 


36  Greater  Britain. 

by  those  rascals  of  the  South.  When  we  did  go  out,  wo  were 
left  to  do  all  the  fighting.  Why,  sir,  I've  seen  a  Mississippian 
division  run  away  from  a  single  Yankee  regiment." 

As  I  heard  much  the  same  story  from  the  North  Carolin- 
iaus  that  I  met,  it  would  seem  as  though  there  was  little  union 
among  the  seceding  States.  The  legend  upon  the  first  of  all 
the  secession  flags  that  were  hoisted  was  typical  of  this  devo- 
tion to  the  fortunes  of  the  State :  "  Death  to  Abolitionists ; 
South  Carolina  goes  it  alone ;"  and  during  the  whole  Avar,  it 
was  not  the  rebel  colors,  but  the  palmetto"  emblem,  or  other 
State  devices,  that  the  ladies  Avore. 

About  the  Avar  itself  but  little  is  said,  though  here  and 
there  I  met  a  man  Avho  would  tell  camp  stories  in  the  North- 
ern style.  One  planter  Avho  had  been  "  out "  himself  went  so 
far  as  to  say  to  me,  "  Our  officers  Avere  good,  but  considering 
that  our  rank  and  file  were  just  '  Avhite-trash,'  and  that  they 
had  to  fight  regiments  of  New  England  Yankee  volunteers, 
Avith  all  their  best  blood  in  the  ranks,  and  Western  sharp- 
shooters together,  it's  only  wonderful  how  we  weren't  whip- 
ped sooner." 

As  for  the  future,  the  planter's  policy  is  a  simple  one : 
"  Reckon  we're  Avhipped,  so  Ave  go  in  now  for  the  old  flag ; 
only  those  Yankee  rogues  must  give  us  the  control  of  our  oavh 
people."  The  one  result  of  the  Avar  has  been,  as  they  be- 
lieve, the  abolition  of  slavery ;  otherwise  the  situation  is  un- 
changed. The  Avar  is  OArer,  the  doctrine  of  secession  is  al- 
lowed to  fall  into  the  background,  and  the  ex-rebels  claim  to 
step  once  more  into  their  former  place,  if,  indeed,  they  admit 
that  they  ever  left  it. 

EArcry  day  that  you  arc  in  the  South  you  come  more  and 
more  to  sec  that  the  "mean  Avhites  "  arc  the  controlling  pow- 
er. The  landowners  are  not  only  few  in  number,  but  their 
apathy  during  the  present  crisis  is  surprising.  The  men  who 
demand  their  readmission  to  the  government  of  eleven  States 
are  unkempt,  fierce-eyed  felloAvs,  not  one  Avhit  better  than  the 
brancos  of  Brazil ;  the  very  men,  strangely  enough,  who  them- 
selves, in  their  "Leavenworth  Constitution,"  first  began  dis- 
franchisement, declaring  that  the  qualification  for  electors  in 
the  iicav  State  of  Kansas  should  be  the  taking  oath  to  uphold 
the  infamous  Fugitive  Slave  LaAv. 


The  South.  37 

These  "  mean  whites  "  were  the  men  who  brought  about 
secession.  The  planters  are  guiltless  of  every  thing  but  crim- 
inal indifference  to  the  acts  that  were  committed  in  their 
name.  Secession  was  the  act  of  a  pack  of  noisy  demagogues  ; 
but  a  false  idea  of  honor  brought  round  a  majority  of  the 
Southern  people,  and  the  infection  of  enthusiasm  carried  over 
the  remainder. 

When  the  war  sprang  up,  the  old  Southern  contempt  for 
the  Yankees  broke  out  into  a  fierce  burst  of  joy  that  the  day 
had  come  for  paying  off  old  scores.  "  "We  hate  them,  sir," 
said  an  old  planter  to  me.  "  I  wish  to  God  that  the  May- 
flower had  sunk  with  all  hands  in  Plymouth  Bay." 

Along  with  this  violence  of  language  there  is  a  singular 
kind  of  cringing  to  the  conquerors.  Time  after  time  I  heard 
the  complaint,  "  The  Yankees  treat  us  shamefully,  I  reckon. 
We  come  back  to  the  Union,  and  give  in  on  every  point ;  we 
renounce  slavery,  we  consent  to  forget  the  past,  and  yet  they 
won't  restore  us  to  our  rights."  Whenever  I  came  to  ask 
what  they  meant  by  "  rights,"  I  found  the  same  haziness  that 
everywhere  surrounds  that  word.  The  Southerners  seem  to 
think  that  men  may  rebel  and  fight  to  the  death  against  their 
country,  and  then,  being  beaten,  lay  down  their  arms  and 
walk  quietly  to  the  polls  along  with  law-abiding  citizens,  se- 
cure in  the  protection  of  the  Constitution  which  for  years 
they  had  fought  to  subvert. 

At  Richmond  I  had  a  conversation  which  may  serve  as  a 
specimen  of  what  one  hears  each  moment  from  the  planters. 
An  old  gentleman  with  whom  I  was  talking  politics  opened  at 
me  suddenly :  "  The  Radicals  are  going  to  give  the  ballot  to 
our  niggers  to  strengthen  their  party,  but  they  know  better 
than  to  give  it  to  their  Northern  niggers." 

D.  "  But  surely  there's  a  difference  in  the  cases." 

The  Planter.  "  You're  right — there  is  ;  but  not  your  way. 
The  difference  is,  that  the  Northern  niggers  can  read  and 
write,  and  even  lie  with  consistency,  and  ours  can't." 

D.  "  But  there's  the  wider  difference,  that  negro  suffrage 
down  here  is  a  necessity,  unless  you  are  to  rule  the  country 
that's  just  beaten  you." 

The  Planter.  "  Well,  there  of  course  we  differ.  We  rebs 
say  we  fought  to  take  our  States  out  of  the  Union.     The 


38  Greater  Britain. 

yanks  beat  us  ;  so  our  States  must  still  be  in  the  Union.  If 
so,  why  shouldn't  our  representatives  be  unconditionally  ad- 
mitted ?" 

Nearer  to  a  conclusion  we  of  course  did  not  come,  he  de- 
claring that  no  man  ought  to  vote  who  had  not  education 
enough  to  understand  the  Constitution,  I  that  this  was  good 
2>rimdfacie  evidence  against  letting  him  vote,  but  that  it  might 
be  rebutted  by  the  proof  of  a  higher  necessity  for  his  voting. 
As  a  planter  said  to  me,  "  The  Southerners  prefer  soldier  rule 
to  nigger  rule ;"  but  it  is  not  a  question  of  what  they  prefer, 
but  of  what  course  is  necessary  for  the  safety  of  the  Union 
which  they  fought  to  destroy. 

Nowhere  in  the  Southern  States  did  I  find  any  expectation 
of  a  fresh  rebellion.  It  is  only  Englishmen  who  ask  whether 
"  the  South  "  will  not  fight  "  once  more."  The  South  is  dead 
and  gone ;  there  can  never  be  a  "  South  "  again,  but  only  so 
many  Southern  States.  "  The  South  "  meant  simply  the  slave 
country :  and  slavery  being  dead,  it  is  dead.  Slavery  gave 
but  two  classes  besides  the  negroes — planters  and  "  mean 
whites."  The  great  planters  were  but  a  few  thousand  in  num- 
ber ;  they  are  gone  to  Canada,  England,  Jamaica,  California, 
Colorado,  Texas.  The  "  mean  whites  " — the  true  South — are 
impossible  in  the  face  of  free  labor  :  they  must  work  or  starve. 
If  they  work,  they  will  no  longer  be  "  mean  whites,"  but  es- 
sentially Northerners — that  is,  citizens  of  a  democratic  repub- 
lic, and  not  oligarchists. 

As  the  Southerners  admit  that  there  can  be  no  f  urther  war, 
it  would  be  better  even  for  themselves  that  they  should  allow 
the  sad  record  of  their  rising  to  fade  away.  Their  speeches, 
their  newspapers,  continue  to  make  use  of  language  which 
nothing  could  excuse,  and  which,  in  the  face  of  the  magna- 
nimity of  the  conquerors,  is  disgraceful.  In  a  Mobile  paper  I 
have  seen  a  leader  which  describes  with  hideous  minuteness 
Lincoln,  Lane,  John  Brown,  and  Dostie  playing  whist  in  hell. 
A  Texas  cutting  which  I  have  is  less  blasphemous,  but  not  less 
vile :  "  The  English  language  no  longer  affords  terms  in  which 
to  curse  a  snivelling,  wcazen-faced  piece  of  humanity  general- 
ly denominated  a  Yankee.  We  see  some  about  here  some- 
times, but  they  skulk  around,  like  sheep-killing  dogs,  and  as- 
sociate mostly  with  niggers.     They  whine  and  prate,  and  talk 


The  Soutii.  39 

about  the  judgment  of  God,  as  if  God  had  any  thing  to  do 
with  them."  The  Southerners  have  not  even  the  wit  or  grace 
to  admit  that  the  men  who  beat  them  were  good  soldiers ; 
"  blackguards  and  braggarts,"  "  cravens  and  thieves  "  are  com- 
mon names  for  the  men  of  the  Union  army.  I  have  in  my 
possession  an  Alabama  paper,  in  which  General  Sheridan,  at 
that  time  the  commander  of  the  military  division  which  includ- 
ed the  State,  is  styled  "  a  short-tailed,  slimy  tadpole  of  the 
later  spawn,  the  blathering  disgrace  of  an  honest  father,  an 
everlasting  libel  on  his  Irish  blood,  the  synonym  of  infamy, 
and  scorn  of  all  brave  men."  While  I  was  in  Virginia,  one 
of  the  Richmond  papers  said,  "  This  thing  of  '  loyalty '  will 
not  do  for  the  Southern  man." 

The  very  day  that  I  landed  in  the  South,  a  dinner  was 
given  at  Richmond  by  the  "  Grays  " — a  volunteer  corps  which 
had  fought  through  the  rebellion.  After  the  roll  of  honor, 
or  list  of  men  killed  in  battle,  had  been  read,  there  were  given 
as  toasts,  by  rebel  officers,  "  Jeff.  Davis — the  caged  eagle  ;  the 
bars  confine  his  person,  but  his  great  spirit  soars  ;"  and  "  The 
conquered  banner,  may  its  resurrection  at  last.be  as  bright 
and  as  glorious  as  theirs — the  dead." 

It  is  in  the  face  of  such  words  as  these  that  Mr.  Johnson, 
the  most  unteachable  of  mortals,  asks  men  who  have  sacrificed 
their  sons  to  restore  the  Union,  to  admit  the  ex-rebels  to  a 
considerable  share  in  the  government  of  the  nation,  even  if 
they  ai*e  not  to  monopolize  it,  as  they  did  before  the  war. 
His  conduct  seems  to  need  the  Western  editor's  defense : 
"  He  must  be  kinder  honest-like,  he  aire  sich  a  tarnation  fool- 
ish critter." 

It  is  clear,  from  the  occurrence  of  such  dinners,  the  publi- 
cation of  such  paragraphs  and  leaders  as  those  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  that  there  is  no  military  tyranny  existing  in  the  South. 
The  country  is  indeed  administered  by  military  commanders, 
but  it  is  not  ruled  by  troops.  Before  we  can  give  ear  to  the 
stories  that  are  afloat  in  Europe  of  the  "  government  of  ma- 
jor-generals," we  must  believe  that  five  millions  of  English- 
men inhabiting  a  country  as  large  as  Europe  are  crushed  down 
by  some  ten  thousand  men — about  as  many  as  are  needed  to 
keep  order  in  the  single  town  of  Warsaw.  The  Southerners 
are  allowed  to  rule  themselves;  the  question  now  at  issue  is 


40  Greater  Britain. 

merely  whether  they  shall  also  rule  their  former  slaves,  the 
negroes. 

I  hardly  felt  myself  out  of  the  reach  of  slavery  and  rebel- 
lion till,  steaming  up  the  Potomac  from  Acquia  Creek  by  the 
gray  dawn,  I  caught  sight  of  a  grand  pile  towering  over  a  city 
from  a  magnificent  situation  on  the  brow  of  a  long,  rolling 
hill.  Just  at  the  moment,  the  sun,  invisible  as  yet  to  us  be- 
low, struck  the  marble  dome  and  cupola,  and  threw  the  bright 
gilding  into  a  golden  blaze,  till  the  Greek  shape  stood  out 
upon  the  blue  sky,  glowing  like  a  second  sun.  The  city  was 
Washington ;  the  palace  with  the  burnished  cupola  the  Capi- 
tol ;  and  within  two  hours  I  was  present  at  the  "  hot-weather 
sitting"  of  the  39th  Congress  of  the  United  States. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  EMPIRE    STATE. 


At  the  far  south-east  of  New  York  City,  where  the  Hud- 
son and  East  River  meet  to  form  the  inner  bay,  is  an  ill-kept 
park  that  might  be  made  the  loveliest  garden  in  the  world. 
NoAvhere  do  the  features  that  have  caused  New  York  to  take 
rank  as  the  first  port  of  America  stand  forth  more  clearly. 
The  soft  evening  breeze  tells  of  a  climate  as  good  as  the  world 
can  show ;  the  setting  sun  floods  with  light  a  harbor  secure 
and  vast,  formed  by  the  confluence  of  noble  streams,  and  girt 
with  quays  at  which  huge  ships  jostle;  the  rows  of  500- 
pounder  Rodmans  at  "  The  Narrows  "  are  tokens  of  the  na- 
tion's strength  and  wealth  ;  and  the  yachts,  as  well  handled  as 
our  own,  racing  into  port  from  an  ocean  regatta,  give  evidence 
that  there  are  Saxons  in  the  land.  At  the  back  is  the  city, 
teeming  with  life,  humming  with  trade,  muttering  with  the 
thunder  of  passage.  Opposite  in  Jersey  City,  people  say, 
"  Every  New  Yorker  has  come  a  good  half-hour  late  into  the 
world,  and  is  trying  all  his  life  to  make  it  up."  The  bustle 
is  immense. 

All  is  so  un-English,  so  foreign,  that  hearing  men  speaking 
what  Czar  Nicholas  was  used  to  call  "  the  American  tongue," 


The  Empire  State.  41 

I  "wheel  round,  crying,  "  Dear  me !  if  here  are  not  some  En- 
glish folk!"  astonished  as  though  I  had  heard  French  in  Aus- 
tralia, or  Italian  in  Timbuctoo. 

The  Englishman  Avho,  coming  to  America,  expects  to  find 
cities  that  smell  of  home,  soon  learns  that  Baker  Street  itself, 
or  Portland  Place,  would  not  look  English  in  the  dry  air  of  a 
continent  four  thousand  miles  across.  New  York,  however, 
is  still  less  English  than  is  Boston,  Philadelphia,  or  Chicago 
— her  people  are  as  little  Saxon  as  her  streets.  Once  South- 
ern, with  the  brand  of  slavery  deeply  printed  in  the  foreheads 
of  her  foremost  men,  since  the  defeat  of  the  rebellion  New 
York  has  to  the  eye  been  cosmopolitan  as  any  city  of  the 
Levant.  All  nationless  towns  are  not  alike:  Alexandria  has 
a  Greek  or  an  Italian  tinge ;  San  Francisco  an  English  tone, 
with  something  of  the  heartiness  of  our  Elizabethan  times ; 
New  York  has  a  deep  Latin  shade,  and  the  democracy  of  the 
Empire  State  is  of  the  French,  not  of  the  American  or  En- 
glish type. 

At  the  back  here  on  the  city  side  are  tall,  gaunt  houses, 
painted  red,  like  those  of  the  quay  at  Dort  or  of  the  Boompjes 
at  Rotterdam,  the  former  dwellings  of  the  "  Knickerbockers  " 
of  New  Amsterdam,  the  founders  of  New  York,  but  now  for- 
gotten. There  may  be  a  few  square  yards  of  painting,  red  or 
blue,  upon  the  houses  in  Broadway ;  there  may  be  here  and 
there  a  pagoda  summer-house  overhanging  a  canal ;  once  in  a 
year  you  may  run  across  a  worthy  descendant  of  the  old 
Netherlandish  families ;  but  in  the  main  the  Hollanders  in 
America  are  as  though  they  had  never  been ;  to  find  the  me- 
morials of  lost  Butch  empire,  we  must  search  Cape  Colony  or 
Ceylon.  The  New  York  un-English  tone  is  not  Batavian. 
Neither  the  sons  of  the  men  who  once  lived  in  these  houses, 
nor  the  Germans  whose  names  are  now  upon  the  doors,  nor, 
for  the  matter  of  that,  we  English,  who  claim  New  York  as 
the  second  of  our  towns,  are  the  to-day's  New  Yorkers. 

Here,  on  the  water's  edge,  is  a  rickety  hall,  Avhere  Jenny 
Lind  sang  when  first  she  landed — now  the  spot  where  strangers 
of  another  kind  are  welcomed  to  America.  Every  true  re-. 
publican  has  in  his  heart  the  notion  that  his  country  is  point- 
ed out  by  God  for  a  refuge  for  the  distressed  of  all  the  na- 
tions.    He  has  sprung  himself  from  men  who  came  to  seek  a 


42  Greater  Britain. 

sanctuary — from  the  Quakers,  or  the  Catholics,  or  the  pilgrims 
of  the  Mayflower.  Even  though  they  come  to  take  the  bread 
from  his  mouth,  or  to  destroy  his  peace,  it  is  his  duty,  he  be- 
lieves, to  aid  the  immigrants.  Within  the  last  twenty  years 
there  have  landed  at  New  York  alone  four  million  strangers. 
Of  these  two-thirds  were  Irish. 

"While  the  Celtic  men  arc  pouring  into  New  York  and  Bos- 
ton, the  New  Englanders  and  New  Yorkers,  too,  are  moving. 
They  are  not  dying.  Facts  arc  opposed  to  this  portentous 
theory.  They  are  going  West.  The  unrest  of  the  Celt  is 
mainly  caused  by  discontent  with  his  country's  present,  that 
of  the  Saxon,  by  hope  for  his  private  future.  The  Irishman 
flies  to  New  York  because  it  lies  away  from  Ireland  ;  the  En- 
glishman takes  it  upon  his  road  to  California. 

Where  one  race  is  dominant,  immigrants  of  another  blood 
soon  lose  their  nationality.  In  New  York  and  Boston  the 
Irish  continue  to  be  Celts,  for  these  are  Irish  cities.  In  Pitts- 
burg, in  Chicago,  still  more  in  the  country  districts,  a  few  years 
made  the  veriest  Paddy  English.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Sax- 
ons are  disappearing  from  the  Atlantic  cities,  as  the  Spaniards 
have  gone  from  Mexico.  The  Irish  here  are  beating  down  the 
English,  as  the  English  have  crushed  out  the  Dutch.  The 
Hollander's  descendants  in  New  York  are  English  now ;  it 
bids  fair  that  the  Saxons  should  be  Irish. 

As  it  is,  though  the  Celtic  immigration  has  lasted  only 
twenty  years,  the  results  are  already  clear :  if  you  see  a  Sax- 
on face  upon  the  Broadway,  you  may  be  sure  it  belongs  to  a 
traveller,  or  to  some  raw  English  lad  bound  West,  just  landed 
from  a  Plymouth  ship.  We  need  not  lay  much  stress  upon 
the  fact  that  all  New  Yorkers  have  black  hair  and  beard ; 
men  may  be  swarthy,  and  yet  English.  The  ancestors  of  the 
Londoners  of  to-day,  we  are  told,  were  yellow-headed  royster- 
ers ;  yet  not  one  man  in  fifty  that  you  meet  in  Fleet  Street 
or  on  Tower  Hill  is  as  fair  as  the  average  Saxon  peasant. 
Doubtless  our  English  eastern  counties  were  peopled  in  the 
main  by  low-Dutch  and  Flemings  :  the  Sussex  eyes  and  hair 
are  rarely  seen  in  Suffolk.  The  Puritans  of  New  England 
are  sprung  from  those  of  "  associated  countries,"  but  the  vic- 
tors of  Marston  Moor  may  have  been  cousins  to  those  no  less 
sturdy  Protestants,  the  Hollanders  who  defended  Leyden.     It 


The  Empire  State.  43 

may  be  that  they  were  our  ancestors,  those  Dutchmen  that  we 
English  crowded  out  of  New  Amsterdam — the  very  place 
where  we  are  sharing  the  fate  Ave  dealt.  The  fiery  temper  of 
the  new  people  of  the  American  coast-towns,  their  impatience 
for  free  government,  are  better  proofs  of  Celtic  blood  than  are 
the  color  of  their  eyes  and  beard. 

Year  by  year  the  toAvns  grow  more  and  more  intensely 
Irish.  Already  of  every  four  births  in  Boston,  one  only  is 
American.  There  are  120,000  foreign  to  70,000  native  vot- 
ers in  New  York  and  Brooklyn.  Montreal  and  Richmond  are 
fast  becoming  Celtic ;  Philadelphia — shades  of  Penn ! — can 
only  be  saved  by  the  aid  of  its  Bavarians.  Saxon  Protest- 
antism is  departing  with  the  Saxons:  the  revenues  of  the 
Empire  State  are  spent  upon  Catholic  asylums ;  plots  of  city 
land  are  sold  at  nominal  rates  for  the  sites  of  Catholic  cathe- 
drals by  the  "  city  stepfathers,"  as  they  are  called.  Not  even 
in  the  West  does  the  Latin  Church  gain  ground  more  rapidly 
than  in  New  York  City :  there  are  80,000  professing  Catho- 
lics in  Boston. 

When  is  this  drama,  of  which  the  first  scene  is  played  in 
Castle  Garden,  to  have  its  close  ?  The  matter  is  grave  enough 
already.  Ten  years  ago,  the  third  and  fourth  cities  of  the 
world,  New  York  and  Philadelphia,  were  as  English  as  our 
London  :  the  one  is  Irish  now,  the  other  all  but  German. 
Not  that  the  Quaker  city  will  remain  Teutonic :  the  Germans, 
too,  are  going  out  upon  the  land  ;  the  Irish  alone  pour  in  un- 
ceasingly. All  great  American  towns  will  soon  be  Celtic, 
while  the  country  continues  English :  a  fierce  and  easily- 
roused  people  will  throng  the  cities,  while  the  law-abiding 
Saxons  who  till  the  land  will  cease  to  rule  it.  Our  relations 
with  America  are  matters  of  small  moment  by  the  side  of  the 
one  great  question,  Who  are  the  Americans  to  be  ? 

Our  kinsmen  are  by  no  means  blind  to  the  dangers  that 
hang  over  them.  The  "  Know-nothing "  movement  failed, 
but  Protection  speaks  the  same  voice  in  its  opposition  to  com- 
mercial centimes.  If  you  ask  a  Western  man  why  he,  -whose  in- 
terest is  clearly  in  Free  Trade,  should  advocate  Protection,  he 
fires  out,  "  Free  Trade  is  good  for  our  American  pockets,  but 
it's  death  to  us  Americans.  All  your  Bastiats  and  Mills  won't 
touch  the  fact  that  to  us  Free  Trade  must  mean  salt-water 


44  Greater  Britain. 

despotism,  and  the  ascendency  of  New  York  and  Boston. 
Which  is  better  for  the  country — one  New  York,  or  ten  con- 
tented Pittsburgs  and  ten  industrious  Lowells  ?" 

The  danger  to  our  race  and  to  the  world  from  Irish  as- 
cendency is  perhaps  less  imminent  than  that  to  the  republic. 
In  January,  1862,  the  mayor,  Fernando  Wood,  the  elect  of  the 
"  Mozart "  democracy,  deliberately  proposed  the  secession 
from  the  Union  of  New  York  City.  Of  all  the  Northern 
States,  New  York  alone  was  a  dead  weight  upon  the  loyal 
people  during  the  war  of  the  rebellion.  The  constituents  of 
Wood  were  the  very  Fenians  whom  in  our  ignorance  we  call 
"  American."  It  is  America  that  Fenianism  invades  from  Ire- 
land— not  England  from  America. 

It  is  no  unfair  attack  upon  the  Irish  to  represent  them  as 
somewhat  dangerous  inhabitants  for  mighty  cities.  Of  the 
sixty  thousand  persons  arrested  yearly  in  New  York,  three- 
fourths  are  alien  born :  two-thirds  of  these  are  Irish.  Nowhere 
else  in  all  America  are  the  Celts  at  present  masters  of  a  city 
government — nowhere  is  there  such  corruption.  The  purity 
of  the  government  of  Melbourne — a  city  more  democratic 
than  New  York — proves  that  the  fault  does  not  lie  in  de- 
mocracy :  it  is  the  universal  opinion  of  Americans  that  the 
Irish  are  alone  responsible. 

The  State  Legislature  is  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  men 
who  control  the  city  council.  They  tell  a  story  of  a  traveller 
on  the  Hudson  River  Railroad,  who,  as  the  train  neared  Albany 
— the  capital  of  New  York — said  to  a  somewhat  gloomy  neigh- 
bor, "  Going  to  the  State  Legislatur'  ?."  getting  for  answer, 
"  No,  sir  !  It's  not  come  to  that  with  me  yet.  Only  to  the 
State-prison  !" 

Americans  are  never  slow  to  ridicule  the  denationalization 
of  New  York.  They  tell  you  that  during  the  Avar  the  colonel 
of  one  of  the  city  regiments  said,  "  I've  the  best  blood  of  eight 
nations  in  the  ranks."  "  How's  that  ?"  "  I've  English,  Irish, 
Welsh,  Scotch,  French,  Italians,  Germans."  "  Guess  that's 
only  seven."  "  Swedes,"  suggested  some  one.  "  No,  no 
Swedes,"  said  the  colonel.  "  Ah  !  I  have  it :  I've  some  Amer- 
icans." Stories  such  as  this  the  rich  New  Yorkers  are  noth- 
ing loth  to  tell,  but  they  take  no  steps  to  check  the  denation- 
alization they  lament.     Iustead  of  entering  upon  a  reform  of 


Tiie  Empire  State.  -15 

their  municipal  institutions,  they  affect  to  despise  free  govern- 
ment ;  instead  of  giving,  as  the  oldest  New  England  families 
have  done,  their  time  to  the  State  schools,  they  keep  entirely 
aloof  from  school  and  State  alike.  Sending  their  boys  to  Cam- 
bridge, Berlin,  Heidelberg,  anywhere  rather  than  to  the  col- 
leges of  their  native  land,  they  leave  it  to  learned,  pious  Bos- 
ton to  supply  the  West  with  teachers,  and  to  keep  up  Yale 
and  Harvard.  Indignant  if  they  are  pointed  at  as  "  no  Amer- 
icans," they  seem  to  separate  themselves  from  every  thing 
that  is  American :  they  spend  summers  in  England,  winters 
in  Algeria,  springs  in  Rome,  and  Coloradans  say  with  a  sneer, 
"  Good  New  Yorkers  go  to  Paris  when  they  die." 

Apart  from  nationality,  there  is  danger  to  free  government 
with  the  growth  of  NeAV  York  City,  and  in  the  gigantic  for- 
tunes of  New  Yorkers.  The  income,  they  tell  me,  of  one  of 
my  merchant  friends  is  larger  than  the  combined  salaries  of 
the  President,  the  governors,  and  the  whole  of  the  members  of 
the  Legislatures  of  all  the  forty-five  States  and  Territories. 
As  my  informant  said,  "  He  could  keep  the  governments  of 
half  a  dozen  States  as  easily  as  I  can  support  my  half-dozen 
children." 

There  is  something,  no  doubt,  of  the  exaggeration  of  polit- 
ical jealousy  about  the  accounts  of  New  York  vice  given  in 
New  England  and  down  South,  in  the  shape  of  terrible  phi- 
lippics. It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  ovei'-statement  is  enormous, 
for  sober  men  are  to  be  found  even  in  New  York  who  will 
tell  you  that  this  city  outdoes  Paris  in  every  form  of  profli- 
gacy as  completely  as  the  French  capital  outherods  imperial 
Rome.  There  is  here  no  concealment  about  the  matter  ;  each 
inhabitant  at  once  admits  the  truth  of  accusations  directed 
against  his  neighbor.  If  the  new  men,  the  "  petroleum  aris- 
tocracy," are  second  to  none  in  their  denunciations  of  the 
Irish,  these  in  their  turn  unite  with  the  oldest  families  in  thun- 
dering against  "  shoddy." 

New  York  life  shows  but  badly  in  the  summer-time ;  it  is 
seen  at  its  worst  when  studied  at  Saratoga.  With  ourselves, 
men  have  hardly  ceased  to  run  from  business  and  pleasures 
worse  than  toil  to  the  comparative  quiet  of  the  country  house. 
Among  New  Yorkers  there  is  not  even  the  affectation  of  a 
search  for  rest ;  the  flight  is  from  the  drives  and  restaurants 


46  Greater  Britain. 

of  New  York  to  the  gambling-halls  of  Saratoga ;  from  win- 
ning piles  of  greenbacks  to  losing  heaps  of  gold ;  from  cotton- 
gambling  to  roulette  or  faro.  Long  Branch  is  still  more  vul- 
gar in  its  vice ;  it  is  the  Margate,  Saratoga  the  Homburg,  of 
America. 

"  Shoddy  "  is  blamed  beyond  what  it  deserves  when  the  fol- 
lies of  New  York  society  are  laid  in  a  body  at  its  door.  If  it 
be  true  that  the  New  York  drawing-rooms  are  the  best  guard- 
ed in  the  world,  it  is  also  true  that  entrance  is  denied  as  rig- 
idly to  intellect  and  eminence  as  to  wealth.  If  exclusivencss 
be  needed,  affectation  can  at  least  do  nothing  toward  sub- 
duing "  shoddy."  Mere  cliquism,  disgusting  everywhere,  is 
ridiculous  in  a  democratic  town ;  its  rules  of  conduct  are  as 
out  of  place  as  kid  gloves  in  the  New  Zealand  bosh,  or  gold 
scabbards  on  a  battle-field. 

Good  meat,  and  drink,  and  air,  give  strength  to  the  men 
and  beauty  to  the  women  of  a  moneyed  class ;  but  in  America 
these  things  are  the  inheritance  of  every  boy  and  girl,  and 
give  their  owners  no  advantage  in  the  world.  During  the 
rebellion  the  ablest  generals  and  bravest  soldiers  of  the  North 
sprang,  not  from  the  merchant  families,  but  from  the  farmer 
folk.  Without  special  merit  of  some  kind,  there  can  be  no 
such  thing  as  aristocracy. 

Many  American  men  and  women,  who  have  too  little  no- 
bility of  soul  to  be  patriots,  and  too  little  understanding  to 
see  that  theirs  is  already,  in  many  points,  the  master-country 
of  the  globe,  come  to  you  and  bewail  the  fate  which  has 
caused  them  to  be  born  citizens  of  a  republic,  and  dwellers  in 
a  country  where  men  call  vices  by  their  names.  The  least 
educated  of  their  countrymen,  the  only  grossly  vulgar  class 
that  America  brings  forth,  they  fly  to  Europe  "  to  escape 
democracy,"  and  pass  their  lives  in  Paris,  Pan,  or  Nice,  living 
libels  on  the  country  they  are  believed  to  represent. 

Out  of  these  discordant  elements,  Cubans,  Knickerbockers, 
Germans,  Irish,  "  first  families,"  "  petroleum,"  and  "  shoddy,'1 
Ave  are  forced  to  construct  our  composite  idea — New  York. 
The  Irish  numerically  predominate,  but  we  have  no  experi- 
ence as  to  what  should  be  the  moral  features  of  an  Irish  city, 
for  Dublin  has  always  been  in  English  hands  ;  possibly  that 
which  in  New  York  appears  to  be  cosmopolitan  is  merely 


Cambridge  Commencement.  47 

Celtic.  However  it  may  be,  this  much  is  clear,  that  the 
humblest  township  of  New  England  reflects  more  truly  the 
America  of  the  past,  the  most  chaotic  village  of  Nebraska 
portrays  more  fully  the  hopes  and  tendencies  of  the  America 
of  the  future,  than  do  this  huge  State  and  city. 

If  the  political  figure  of  New  York  is  not  encouraging,  its 
natural  beauty  is  singularly  great.  Those  who  say  that 
America  has  no  scenery,  forget  the  Hudson,  while  they  can 
never  have  explored  Lake  George,  Lake  Champlain,  and  the 
Mohawk.  That  Poole's  exquisite  scene  from  the  "  Decame- 
ron," "  Philomela's  Song,"  could  have  been  realized  on  earth 
I  never  dreamt  until  I  saw  the  singers  at  a  New  Yorker's 
villa  on  the  Hudson  grouped  in  the  deep  shades  of  a  glen, 
from  which  there  was  an  outlook  upon  the  basaltic  palisades 
and  lake-like  Tappan  Zee.  It  was  in  some  such  spot  that  De 
Tocqueville  wrote  the  brightest  of  his  brilliant  letters — that 
dated  "  Sing  Sing  " — for  he  speaks  of  himself  as  lying  on  a 
bill  that  overhung  the  Hudson,  watching  the  white  sails  gleam- 
ing in  the  hot  sun,  and  trying  in  vain  to  fancy  what  became 
of  the  river  where  it  disappeared  in  the  blue  "  Highlands." 

That  New  York  City  itself  is  full  of  beauty  the  view  from 
Castle  Garden  would  suffice  to  show ;  and  by  night  it  is  not 
less  lovely  than  by  day.  The  harbor  is  illuminated  by  the 
colored  lanterns  of  a  thousand  boats,  and  the  steam-whistles 
tell  of  a  life  that  never  sleeps.  The  paddles  of  steamers  seem 
not  only  to  beat  the  water,  but  to  stir  the  languid  air,  and  so 
provoke  a  breeze,  and  the  lime-lights  at  the  Fulton  and  Wall 
Street  ferries  burn  so  brightly  that  in  the  warm  glare  the  eye 
reaches  through  the  still  night  to  the  feathery  acacias  in  the 
streets  of  Brooklyn.  The  view  is  as  southern  as  the  people : 
we  have  not  yet  found  America. 


CHAPTER  V. 

CAMBRIDGE    COMMENCEMENT. 


"  Old  Cambridge  !  Long  may  she  flourish !"  pi'oposeel 
by  a  professor  in  the  University  of  Cambridge,  in  America, 
and  drunk  standing,  with  three  cheers,  by  the  graduates  and 
under-graduates  of  Harvard,  is  a  toast  that  sets  one  thinking. 


48  Greater  Britain. 

Cambridge  in  America  is  not  by  any  means  a  university 
of  to-day.  Harvard  College,  which,  being  the  only  "  house," 
has  engrossed  the  privileges,  funds,  and  titles  of  the  Univer- 
sity, was  founded  at  Cambridge,  Mass.,  in  1636,  only  ninety 
years  later  than  the  greatest  and  wealthiest  college  of  our 
Cambridge  in  Old  England.  Puritan  Harvard  was  the  sister 
rather  than  the  daughter  of  our  own  Puritan  Emmanuel. 
Harvard  himself,  and  Dunster,  the  first  president  of  Harvard's 
College,  were  among  the  earliest  of  the  scholars  of  Emmanuel. 

A  toast  from  the  Cambridge  of  New  to  the  Cambridge  of 
Old  England  is  one  from  younger  to  elder  sister ;  and  Dr. 
Wendell  Holmes,  "  The  Autocrat,"  said  as  much  in  proposing 
it  at  the  Harvard  Alumni  Celebration  of  1866. 

Like  other  old  institutions,  Harvard  needs  a  ten-days' 
revolution :  academic  abuses  flourish  as  luxuriantly  upon 
American  as  on  English  soil,  and  university  difficulties  are 
much  the  same  in  either  country.  Here,  as  at  home,  the  com- 
plaint is  that  the  men  come  up  to  the  University  untaught. 
To  all  of  them  their  college  is  forced  for  a  time  to  play  the 
high-school ;  to  some  she  is  never  any  thing  more  than  school. 
At  Harvard  this  is  worse  than  with  ourselves :  the  average 
age  of  entry,  though  of  late  much  risen,  is  still  considerably 
under  eighteen. 

The  college  is  now  aiming  at  raising  gradually  the  stand- 
ard of  entry :  when  once  all  are  excluded  save  men,  and  think- 
ing men,  real  students,  such  as  those  by  whom  some  of  the 
new  Western  universities  are  attended,  then  Harvard  hopes 
to  leave  drill-teaching  entirely  to  the  schools^  and  to  permit 
the  widest  freedom  in  the  choice  of  studies  to  her  students. 

Harvard  is  not  blameless  in  this  matter.  Like  other  uni- 
versities, she  is  conservative  of  bad  things  as  well  as  good ; 
indeed,  ten  minutes  within  her  walls  would  suffice  to  convince 
even  an  Englishman  that  Harvard  clings  to  the  times  before 
the  Revolution. 

Her  conservatism  is  shown  in  many  trivial  things — in  the 
dress  of  her  janitors  and  porters,  in  the  cut  of  the  grass-plots 
and  college  gates,  in  the  conduct  of  the  Commencement  ora- 
tions in  the  chapel.  For  the  dainty  little  dames  from  Boston 
who  came  to  hear  their  friends  and  brothers  recite  their  dis- 
quisitions none  but  Latin  programmes  were  provided,  and  the 


Cambridge  Commencement.  49 

poor  ladies  were  condemned  to  find  such  names  as  Bush,  Mau- 
rice, Benjamin,  Humphrey,  and  Underwood  among  the  gradu- 
ating youths,  distorted  into  Bvsh,  Mavritivs,  Beniamin,  Ilvm- 
phredvs,  Vnderwood. 

This  conservatism  of  the  New  England  universities  had 
just  received  a  sharp  attack.  In  the  Commencement  oration, 
Dr.  Hedges,  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  Unitarian  Church,  had 
strongly  pressed  the  necessity  for  a  complete  freedom  of 
study  after  entry,  a  liberty  to  take  up  what  line  the  student 
would,  to  be  examined  and  to  graduate  in  what  he  chose. 
He  had  instanced  the  success  of  Michigan  University  con- 
sequent upon  the  adoption  of  this  plan ;  he  had  pointed 
to  the  fact  that  of  all  the  universities  in  America,  Michigan 
alone  drew  her  students  from  every  State.  President  Hill 
and  Ex-president  Walker  had  indorsed  his  views. 

There  is  a  special  fitness  in  the  reformers  coming  forward 
at  this  time.  This  year  is  the  commencement  of  a  new  era  at 
Harvard,  for  at  the  request  of  the  college  staff,  the  connection 
of  the  University  with  the  commonwealth  of  Massachusetts 
has  just  been  dissolved,  and  the  members  of  the  Board  of 
Overseers  are  in  future  to  be  elected  by  the  University,  in- 
stead of  nominated  by  the  State.  This  being  so,  the  question 
had  been  raised  as  to  whether  the  governor  would  come  in 
state  to  Commencement,  but  he  yielded  to  the  wishes  of  the 
graduates,  and  came  with  the  traditional  pomp,  attended  by  a 
staff  in  uniform,  and  escorted  by  a  troop  of  Volunteer  Lan- 
cers, whose  scarlet  coats  and  polished  hats  recalled  the  times 
before  the  Revolution. 

While  the  ceremony  was  still  in  progress,  I  had  been  in- 
troduced to  several  of  the  foremost  rowing-men  among  the 
younger  graduates  of  Harvard,  and  at  its  conclusion  I  accom- 
panied them  to  their  river.  They  were  in  strict  training  for 
their  University  race  with  Yale,  which  was  to  come  off  in  a 
week ;  and  as  Cambridge  had  been  beaten  twice  running,  and 
this  year  had  a  better  crew,  they  were  wishful  for  criticisms 
on  their  style.  Such  an  opinion  as  a  stranger  could  offer  was 
soon  given ;  they  were  dashing,  fast,  long  in  their  stroke ; 
strong,  considering  their  light  weights,  but  terribly  overwork- 
ed. They  have  taken  for  a  rule  the  old  English  notions  as 
to  training  which  have  long  since  disappeared  at  home,  and, 

C 


50  Greater  Britain. 

looked  upon  as  fanatics  by  their  friends  and  tutors,  they  have 
all  the  fanatic's  excess  of  zeal. 

Rowing  and  other  athletics,  with  the  exceptions  of  skating 
and  base  ball,  are  both  neglected  and  despised  in  America. 
When  the  smallest  sign  of  a  reaction  appears  in  the  New 
England  colleges,  there  comes  at  once  a  cry  from  Boston  that 
brains  are  being  postponed  to  brawn.  If  New  Englanders 
would  look  about  them,  they  would  see  that  their  climate  has 
of  itself  developed  brains  at  the  expense  of  brawn,  and  that, 
if  national  degeneracy  is  to  be  long  prevented,  brawn  must  in 
some  way  be  fostered.  The  high  shoulder,  head-voice,  and 
pallor  of  the  Boston  men  are  not  incompatible  with  the  pos- 
session of  the  most  powerful  brain,  the  keenest  wit ;  but  it  is 
not  probable  that  energy  and  talent  will  be  continued  in  fu- 
ture generations  sprung  from  the  worn-out  men  and  women 
of  to-day. 

The  prospect  at  present  is  not  bright ;  year  by  year  Ameri- 
cans grow  thinner,  lighter,  and  shorter-lived.  ^Elian's  Ameri- 
cans, we  may  remember,  though  they  were  greatly  superior  to 
the  Greeks  in  stature,  were  inferior  to  them  in  length  of  life. 
The  women  show  even  greater  signs  of  weakness  than  the 
men,  and  the  high,  undulating  tones  which  are  affectation  in 
the  French  are  natural  to  the  ladies  of  America ;  little  can  be 
expected  of  women  whose  only  exercise  is  excessive  dancing 
in  overheated  rooms. 

The  American  summer,  often  tropical  in  its  heat,  has  much 
to  answer  for,  but  it  is  the  winter  which  makes  the  saddest 
havoc  among  the  younger  j>eople,  and  the  boys  and  girls  at 
school.  Cooped  np  all  day  in  the  close  air  of  the  heated 
school-house,  the  poor  children  are  at  night  made  to  run 
straight  back  to  the  furnace-dried  atmosphere  of  home.  The 
thermometer  is  commonly  raised  in-doors  to  80  or  90  degrees 
Fahr.  The  child  is  not  only  baked  into  paleness  and  sweated 
bit  by  bit  to  its  death,  but  fed  meantime,  out  of  mistaken 
kindness,  upon  the  most  indigestible  of  dainties — pastry,  hot 
dough-nuts,  and  sweetmeats  taking  the  place  of  bread,  and 
milk,  and  meat — and  is  not  allowed  to  take  the  slightest 
exercise,  except  its  daily  run  to  school-house.  Who  can  won- 
der that  spinal  diseases  should  prevail? 

One  reason  why  Americans  are  pale  and  aguish  is  that,  as 


Cambridge  Commencement.  51 

a  people,  they  are  hewers  of  primeval  forest  and  tillers  of  vir- 
gin soil.  These  are  the  unhealthiest  employments  in  the 
world;  the  sun  darts  down  upon  the  hitherto  unreached 
mould,  and  sets  free  malarious  gases,  against  which  the  new 
settlers  have  no  antidotes. 

The  rowing-men  of  Harvard  tell  me  that  their  clubs  are 
still  looked  on  somewhat  coldly  by  the  majority  of  the  pro- 
fessors, who  obstinately  refuse  to  see  that  improved  physical 
type  is  not  an  end,  but  a  means,  toward  improvement  of  the 
mental  faculties,  if  not  in  the  present,  at  least  in  the  next  gen- 
eration. As  for  the  moral  training  in  the  virtues  of  obedience 
and  command,  for  which  a  boat's  crew  is  the  best  of  schools, 
that  is  not  yet  understood  at  Harvard,  where  rowing  is  con- 
fined to  the  half-dozen  men  who  are  to  represent  the  college 
in  the  annual  race,  and  the  three  or  four  more  who  are  be- 
ing trained  to  succeed  them  in  the  crew.  Rowing  in  Ameri- 
ca is  what  it  was  till  ten  years  since  at  old  Cambridge,  and  is 
still  at  Oxford — not  an  exercise  for  the  majority  of  the  stu- 
dents, but  a  pursuit  for  a  small  number.  Physical  culture  is, 
however,  said  to  be  making  some  small  progress  in  the  older 
States,  and  I  myself  saw  signs  of  the  tendency  in  Philadelphia. 
The  war  has  done  some  good  in  this  respect,  and  so  has  the 
influx  of  Canadians  to  Chicago.  Cricket  is  still  almost  an  un- 
known thing,  except  in  some  few  cities.  When  I  was  coming 
in  to  Baltimore  by  train,  we  passed  a  meadow  in  which  a 
match  was  being  played.  A  Southerner  to  whom  I  was  talk- 
ing at  the  time,  looked  at  the  players,  and  said  with  surprise : 
"  Reckon  they've  got  a  wounded  man  ther',  front  o'  them 
sticks,  sah."  I  found  that  he  meant  the  batsman,  who  was 
wearing  pads. 

One  of  the  most  brilliant  of  Harvard's  thinkers  has  taken 
to  carpentering  as  a  relief  to  his  mental  toil ;  her  most  famed 
professor  is  often  to  be  found  working  in  his  garden  or  his 
farm ;  but  such  change  of  work  for  work  is  possible  only  to 
certain  men.  The  generality  of  Americans  need  not  only 
exercise,  but  relaxation ;  still,  with  less  physical,  they  possess 
greater  mental  vitality  than  ourselves. 

On  the  day  that  follows  Commencement — the  chief  cere- 
mony of  the  academic  year — is  held  once  in  three  summers 
the  "  Alumni  Celebration,"  or  meeting  of  the  past  graduates 


02  Greater  Britain. 

of  Harvard — a  touching  gathering  at  all  times,  but  peculiarly 
so  in  these  times  that  follow  on  the  losses  of  the  war. 

The  American  college  informal  organizations  rest  upon  the 
unit  pf  the  "class."  The  "class"  is  what  at  Cambridge  is 
called  "  men  of  the  same  year  " — men  who  enter  together  and 
graduate  together  at  the  end  of  the  regular  course.  Each 
class  of  a  large  New  England  college,  such  as  Harvard,  will 
often  possess  an  association  of  its  own ;  its  members  will  dine 
together  once  in  five  years,  or  ten — men  returning  from  Eu- 
rope and  from  the  Far  West  to  be  present  at  the  gathering. 

Harvard  is  strong  in  the  affections  of  the  New  England 
people — her  faults  are  theirs  ;  they  love  her  for  them,  and 
keep  her  advantages  to  themselves,  for  in  the  whole  list  of 
graduates  for  this  year  I  could  find  only  two  Irish  names. 

Here,  at  the  Alumni  Celebration,  a  procession  was  mar- 
shalled in  the  library  in  which  the  order  was  by  classes ;  the 
oldest  class  of  which  there  were  living  members  being  the 
first.  "  Class  of  1797  !"  and  two  old  white-haired  gentlemen 
tottered  from  the  crowd,  and  started  on  their  march  down  the 
central  aisle,  and  out  bareheaded  into  the  blaze  of  one  of  the 
hottest  days  that  America  had  ever  known.  "  Class  of  1800 !" 
missing  two  years,  in  which  all  the  graduates  were  dead; 
and  out  came  one,  the  sole  survivor.  Then  came  "  1803,"  and 
so  on,  to  the  stalwart  company  of  the  present  year.  When 
the  classes  of  1859  and  1860,  and  of  the  war-years  were  call- 
ed, those  Avho  marched  out  showed  many  an  empty  sleeve. 

The  present  triennial  celebration  is  noteworthy  not  only  for 
the  efforts  of  the  University  reformers,  but  also  for  the  foun- 
dation of  the  Memorial  Hall,  dedicated  as  a  monument  to 
those  sons  of  Harvard  who  fell  while  serving  their  country  in 
the  suppression  of  the  late  rebellion.  The  purity  of  their 
patriotism  hardly  needed  illustration  by  the  fire  of  young 
Everett,  the  graceful  speech  of  Dr.  Holmes.  Even  the  splen- 
did oratory  of  Governor  Bullock  could  do  little  more  than 
force  us  to  read  for  ourselves  the  Roll  of  Honor,  and  see  how 
many  of  Harvard's  most  distinguished  younger  men  died  for 
their  country  as  privates  of  Massachusetts  Volunteers. 

There  was  a  time,  as  England  knows,  when  the  thinking 
men  of  Boston,  and  the  Cambridge  professors,  Emerson,  Rus- 
sell Lowell,  Asa  Gray,  and  a  dozen  more  of  almost  equal  fame, 


Cambridge  Commencement.  53 

morally  seceded  from  their  country's  councils,  and  were  fol- 
lowed in  their  secession  by  the  younger  men.  "  The  best 
men  in  America  stand  aloof  from  politics,"  it  was  said. 

The  country  from  which  these  men  seceded  was  not  the 
America  of  to-day;  it  was  the  union  which  South  Carolina 
ruled.  From  it  the  Cambridge  professors  "came  out,"  not 
because  they  feared  to  vex  their  nerves  with  the  shock  of  pub- 
lic argument  and  action,  but  because  the  course  of  the  slave- 
holders was  not  their  course.  Hating  the  wrongs  they  saw 
but  could  not  remedy,  they  separated  themselves  from  the 
wrong-doers — another  matter,  this,  from  the  "hating  hatred" 
of  our  culture  class  in  England. 

In  1863  and  1864  there  came  the  reckoning.  When  Ameri- 
ca was  first  brought  to  see  the  things  that  had  been  done  in 
her  name,  and  at  her  cost,  and,  rising  in  her  hitherto  unknown 
strength,  struck  the  noblest  blow  for  freedom  that  the  world 
lias  seen,  the  men  who  had  been  urging  on  the  movement  from 
without  at  once  re-entered  the  national  ranks,  and  marched  to 
victory.  Of  the  men  who  sat  beneath  Longfellow,  and  Agas- 
siz,  and  Emerson,  whole  battalions  went  forth  to  war.  From 
Oberlin  almost  every  male  student  and  professor  marched,  and 
the  university  teaching  was  left  in  the  women's  hands.  Out 
of  8000  school  teachers  in  Pennsylvania,  of  whom  300  alone 
were  draughted,  3000  volunteered  for  the  Avar.  Everywhere 
the  teachers  and  their  students  were  foremost  among  the  vol- 
unteers, and  from  that  time  forward  America  and  her  think' 
ers  were  at  one. 

The  fierce  passions  of  this  day  of  wakening  have  not  been 
suffered  to  disturb  the  quiet  of  the  academic  town.  Our  En- 
glish universities  have  not  about  them  the  classic  repose,  the 
air  of  study,  that  belong  to  Cambridge,  Massachusetts.  Those 
who  have  seen  the  lanes  of  Leyden,  and  compared  them  with 
the  noisy  Oxford  High  Street,  will  understand  what  I  mean 
when  I  say  that  our  Cambridge  comes  nearest  to  her  daugh- 
ter-town; but  even  the  English  Cambridge  has  a  bustling- 
street  or  two,  and  a  weekly  market-day,  while  Cambridge 
in  New  England  is  one  great  academic  grove,  bui-ied  in  the 
philosophic  calm  which  our  university  towns  can  never  ri- 
val so  long  as  men  resort  to  them  for  other  purposes  than 
work. 


54  Greater  Britain. 

It  is  not  only  in  the  Harvard  precincts  that  the  oldness  of 
New  England  is  to  be  remarked.  Although  her  people  are 
everywhere  in  the  vanguard  of  all  progress,  their  country  has 
a  look  of  gable-ends  and  steeple-hats,  while  their  laws  seem 
fresh  from  the  hands  of  Alfred.  In  all  England  there  is  no 
city  which  has  suburbs  so  gray  and  venerable  as  are  the  elm- 
shaded  towns  round  Boston :  Dorchester,  Chelsea,  Nahant, 
and  Salem,  each  seems  more  ancient  than  its  fellow ;  the  peo- 
ple speak  the  English  of  Elizabeth,  and  joke  about  us,  " 

speaks  good  English  for  an  Englishman." 

In  the  country  districts,  the  winsome  villages  that  nestle  in 
the  dells  seem  to  have  been  there  for  ten  centuries  at  least ; 
and  it  gives  one  a  shock  to  light  on  such  a  spot  as  Bloody 
Brook,  and  to  be  told  that  only  one  hundred  and  ninety  years 
ago  Captain  Lathrop  was  slain  there  by  Red  Indians,  with 
eighty  youths,  "  the  flower  of  Essex  County,"  as  the  Puritan 
history  says. 

The  warnings  of  Dr.  Hedges,  in  reference  to  the  strides  of 
Michigan,  have  taken  the  New  Englanders  by  surprise.  Se- 
cure, as  they  believed,  in  their  intellectual  supremacy,  they  for- 
got that  in  a  federal  union  the  moral  and  physical  primacy 
will  generally  both  reside  in  the  same  State.  The  common- 
wealth of  Massachusetts,  at  one  time  the  foremost  upholder 
of  the  doctrine  of  State  Rights,  will  soon  be  seen  once  more 
acting  as  its  champion — this  time  on  behalf  of  herself  and  her 
five  sister  States. 

Were  the  six  New  England  commonwealths  grouped  to- 
gether into  a  single  State,  it  would  still  have  only  three-fourths 
of  the  population  of  New  York,  and  about  an  equal  number  of 
inhabitants  with  Pennsylvania.  The  State  of  Rhode  Island  is 
one-fourth  the  size  of  many  a  single  California  county.  Such 
facts  as  these  will  not  be  long  lost  sight  of  in  the  West ;  and 
when  a  difference  of  interests  springs  up,  Ohio  will  not  suffer 
her  voice  in  the  Senate  to  continue  to  be  neutralized  by  that  of 
Connecticut  or  Rhode  Island.  Even  if  the  Senate  be  allowed 
to  remain  untouched,  it  is  certain  that  the  redistribution  of 
seats  consequent  upon  the  census  of  1870  will  completely 
transfer  political  power  to  the  central  States.  That  New  En- 
gland will  by  this  change  inevitably  lose  her  hold  upon  the  des- 
tinies of  the  whole  Union  is  not  so  clear.     The  influence  for 


Cambridge  Commencement.  55 

good  of  New  England  upon  the  "West  has  been  chiefly  semi- 
nal, but  not  for  that  the  less  enormous.  Go  into  a  State  such 
as  Michigan,  where  half  the  people  are  immigrants — where, 
of  the  remaining  moiety,  the  greater  part  ai-e  born  Western- 
ers, and  apparently  in  no  way  of  New  England — and  you  will 
find  that  the  inhabitants  are  for  the  most  part  earnest,  God- 
fearing men,  with  a  New  England  tone  of  profound  manliness 
and  conviction  running  through  every  thing  they  say  and  do. 
The  colleges  in  which  they  have  been  reared  are  directed,  you 
will  find,  by  New  England  professors,  men  reared  in  the  clas- 
sic schools  of  Harvard,  Yale,  or  Amherst ;  the  ministers  under 
whom  they  sit  are,  for  the  most  part,  Boston  men ;  the  books 
they  read  are  of  New  England,  or  old  English  of  the  class 
from  which  the  writers  of  the  Puritan  States  themselves  have 
drawn  their  inspiration.  To  New  England  is  chiefly  due,  in 
short,  the  making  of  America  a  godly  nation. 

It  is  something  in  this  age  to  come  across  a  people  who  be* 
lieve  strongly  in  any  thing,  and  consistently  act  upon  their 
beliefs :  the  New  Englanders  are  such  a  race.  Thoroughly 
God-fearing  States  are  not  so  common  that  we  can  afford  to 
despise  them  when  found,  and  nowhere  does  religion  enter 
more  into  daily  life  than  in  Vermont  or  Massachusetts. 

The  States  of  the  Union  owe  so  huge  a  debt  of  gratitude 
to  New  England,  that  on  this  score  alone  they  may  refrain 
from  touching  her  with  sacrilegious  hands.  Not  to  name  her 
previous  sacrifices,  the  single  little  State  of  Massachusetts — 
one-fourth  the  size  of  Scotland,  and  but  half  as  populous  as 
Paris — sent  during  the  rebellion  a  hundred  and  fifty  regiments 
to  the  field. 

It  was  to  Boston  that  Lincoln  telegraphed  when,  in  18G1,  at 
a  minute's  notice,  he  needed  men  for  the  defense  of  Wash- 
ington. So  entirely  were  Southerners  of  the  opinion  that  the 
New  Englanders  were  the  true  supporters  of  the  old  flag,  that 
"  Yankee  "  became  a  general  term  for  loyalists  of  any  State. 
America  can  never  forget  the  steady  heroism  of  New  Englaud 
during  the  great  struggle  for  national  existence. 

The  unity  that  has  been  the  chief  cause  of  the  strength  of 
the  New  England  influence  is  in  some  measure  sprung  from 
the  fact  that  these  six  States  are  completely  shut  off  from 
all  America  by  the  single  State  of  New  York,  alien  from  them 


56  Greater  Britain. 

in  political  and  moral  life.  Every  Yankee  feels  his  country 
bounded  by  the  British,  the  Irish,  and  the  sea. 

In  addition  to  the  homogeneousness  of  isolation,  the  New 
Englanders,  like  the  Northern  Scotch,  have  the  advantages  of 
a  bad  climate  and  a  miserable  soil.  These  have  been  the  true 
agents  in  the  development  of  the  energy,  the  skill,  and  forti- 
tude of  the  Yankee  people.  In  the  war,  for  instance,  it  was 
plain  that  the  children  of  the  poor  and  ragged  North-eastern 
States  were  not  the  men  to  be  beaten  by  the  lotus-eaters  of 
Louisiana  w7hen  they  were  doing  battle  for  what  they  believed 
to  be  a  religious  cause. 

One  effect  of  the  poverty  of  soil  with  which  New  England 
is  afflicted  has  been  that  her  sons  have  wandered  from  end  to 
end  of  the  known  world,  engaged  in  every  trade,  and  succeed- 
ing in  all.  Sometimes  there  is  in  their  migrations  a  religious 
side.  Mormonism,  although  it  now  draws  its  forces  from 
Great  Britain,  was  founded  in  New  England.  At  Brindisi,  on 
my  way  home,  I  met  three  Yankees  returning  from  a  Maine 
colony  lately  founded  at  Jaffa,  in  expectation  of  the  fulfillment 
of  prophecy,  and  destruction  of  the  Mohammedan  rule.  For 
the  moment  they  are  intriguing  for  a  firman  from  the  very 
Government  upon  the  coming  fall  of  which  all  their  expecta- 
tions have  been  based,  and  these  fierce  fanatics  are  making 
money  by  managing  a  hotel.  One  of  them  told  me  that  the 
Jaffa  colony  is  a  "  religio-commercial  speculation." 

New  England  Yankees  are  not  always  so  filled  with  the 
Puritan  spirit  as  to  reject  unlawful  means  of  money-making. 
Even  the  Massachusetts  common  schools  and  prim  Connecti- 
cut meeting-houses  turn  out  their  black  sheep  into  the  world. 
At  Centre  Harbor,  in  New  Hampshire,  I  met  with  an  example 
of  the  "  Yankee  spawn  "  in  a  Maine  man — a  shrewd,  sailor- 
looking  fellow.  He  was  sitting  next  me  at  the  table-d'hote, 
and  asked  me  to  take  a  glass  of  his  champagne.  I  declined, 
but  chatted,  and  let  out  that  I  was  a  Britisher. 

"  I  was  subject  to  your  Government  once  for  sixteen 
months,"  my  neighbor  said. 

"  Really  !     Where  ?" 

"  Sierra  Leone.  I  was  a  prisoner  there.  And  very  lucky 
too." 

"  Why  so  ?"  I  asked. 


Canada.  57 

"  Because,  if  the  American  Government  had  caught  me, 
they  would  have  hanged  me  for  a  pirate.  But  Iwasrtt  a  pi- 
rate." 

With  ovcrgrcat  energy  I  struck  in,  "  Of  course  not." 

My  Neighbok.  "2To;  I  was  a  slaver." 

Idling  among  the  hills  of  New  Hampshire  and  the  lakes  of 
Maine,  it  is  impossible  for  a  stranger,  starting  free  from  preju- 
dice, not  to  end  by  loving  the  pious  people  of  New  England, 
for  he  will  see  that  there  could  bo  no  severer  blow  to  the  cause 
of  freedom  throughout  the  world  than  the  loss  by  them  of  an 
influence  upon  American  life  and  thought  which  has  been  one 
of  unmixed  good.     Still,  New  England  is  not  America. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

CANADA. 

There  is  not  in  the  world  a  nobler  outlook  than  that  from 
off  the  terrace  at  Quebec,  You  stand  upon  a  rock  overhang- 
ing city  and  river,  and  look  down  upon  the  guard-ship's  masts. 
Acre  upon  acre  of  timber  comes  floating  down  the  stream 
above  the  city,  the  Canadian  songs  just  reaching  you  upon 
the  heights  ;  and  beneath  you  are  fleets  of  great  ships,  English, 
German,  French,  and  Dutch,  embarking  the  timber  from  the 
floating-docks.  The  stars  and  stripes  are  nowhere  to  be  seen. 
Such  arc  the  distances  in  North  America,  that  here,  farther 
from  the  sea  than  is  any  city  in  Europe  west  of  Moscow,  we 
have  a  sea-port  town,  with  gun-boat  and  three-decker,  morning 
and  evening  guns,  and  bars  of  "  God  save  the  Queen,"  to  mark 
the  opening  and  closing  of  the  port. 

The  St.  Lawrence  runs  in  a  chasm  in  a  flat  table -land, 
through  which  some  earlier  Niagara  seems  to  have  cut  for  it, 
a  way.  Some  of  the  tributaries  are  in  sight,  all  falling  from  a 
cliff  into  the  deep  still  river.  In  the  distance,  seaward,  a  sil- 
ver ribbon  on  the  rock  represents  the  grand  Falls  of  Montmo- 
renci.  Long  villages  of  white  tiny  cots  straggle  along  the 
roads  that  radiate  from  the  city ;  the  great  black  cross  of  the 
French  parish  church  showing  reverently  from  all. 

0  2 


58  Greater  Britain. 

On  the  north  the  eye  reaches  to  the  rugged  outlines  of  the 
Laurentian  range,  composed  of  the  oldest  mountains  in  the 
world,  at  the  foot  of  which  is  Lake  St.  Charles,  full  of  fiord- 
like northern  beauty,  where  at  a  later  time  I  learned  to  paddle 
the  Indian  canoe  of  birch-bark. 

Leaving  the  citadel,  we  are  at  once  in  the  European  Middle 
Ages.  Gates  and  posterns,  cranky  steps  that  led  up  to  lofty 
gabled  houses,  with  sharp  French  roofs  of  burnished  tin,  like 
those  of  Liege;  processions  of  the  Host;  altars  decked  with 
flowers  ;  statues  of  the  Virgin,  sabots,  blouses ;  and  the  scarlet 
of  the  British  linesmen — all  these  are  seen  in  narrow  streets 
and  markets,  that  are  graced  with  many  a  Cotentin  lace  cap, 
and  all  within  forty  miles  of  the  down-east  Yankee  State  of 
Maine.     It  is  not  far  from  New  England  to  Old  France. 

Quebec  Lower  Town  is  very  like  St.  Peter  Port  in  Guern- 
sey. Norman-French  inhabitants,  guarded  by  British  troops, 
step-built  streets,  thronged  fruit-market,  and  citadel  upon  a 
rock,  frowning  down  upon  the  quays,  are  alike  in  each.  A 
slight  knowledge  of  the  Upper  Normandy  patois  is  not  with- 
out its  use ;  it  procured  me  an  offer  of  a  pinch  of  snuff  from 
an  old  habitante  on  board  one  of  the  river-boats.  Her  gesture 
was  worthy  of  the  ancien  regime. 

There  has  been  no  dying-out  of  the  race  among  the  French 
Canadians.  They  number  twenty  times  the  thousands  that 
they  did  a  hundred  years  ago.  The  American  soil  has  left 
their  physical  type,  religion,  language,  laws,  and  habits  abso- 
lutely untouched.  They  herd  together  in  their  rambling  villa- 
ges, dance  to  the  fiddle  after  mass  on  Sundays  as  gayly  as  once 
did  their  Norman  sires,  and  keep  up  the  fleur-de-lis  and  the 
memory  of  Montcalm.  More  French  than  the  French  are  the 
Lower  Canadian  habitants. 

Not  only  here,  but  everywhere,  a  French  "  dependency  "  is 
France  transported ;  not  a  double  of  the  France  to-day,  but  a 
mummy  of  the  France  of  the  time  of  the  "  colony's  "  founda- 
tion. In  Saigon,  you  find  Imperial  France ;  here,  the  France 
of  Louis  Quatorze.  The  Englishman  founds  everywhere  a 
New  England — new  in  thought  as  in  soil ;  the  Frenchman 
carries  with  him  to  California,  to  Japan,  an  undying  recollec- 
tion of  the  Palais  Royal.  In  San  Francisco  there  lives  a  great 
French  capitalist,  who,  since  1849,  has  been  the  originator  of 


Canada.  59 

every  successful  Californian  speculation.  He  can  not  speak  a 
word  of  English,  and  his  greatest  pleasure,  in  a  country  of 
fruits  and  wine,  is  to  bid  his  old  French  servant  assure  him, 
upon  honor,  that  his  whole  dessert,  from  his  claret  to  his  olives, 
lias  been  brought  for  him  from  France.  There  is  much  in  the 
colonizing  instinct  of  our  race,  but  something,  perhaps,  in  the 
consideration  that  the  English  are  hardly  happy  enough  at 
home  to  be  always  looking  back  to  what  they  have  left  in  the 
Old  Country. 

There  is  about  this  Old  F.ance  something  of  Dutch  sleepi- 
ness and  content.  There  is,  indeed,  some  bustle  in  the  market- 
place, where  the  grand  old  dames  in  snowy  caps  sit  selling 
plums  and  pears  ;  there  is  much  singing  made  over  the  lading 
of  the  timber-ships ;  there  are  rafts  in  hundreds  gliding  down 
the  river  ;  old  French  carts  in  dozens,  creaking  and  wheezing 
on  their  lumbering  way  to  town,  with  much  cracking  of  whips 
and  clappering  of  wooden  shoes.  All  these  things  there  are, 
but  then  there  are  these  and  more  in  Dol,  and  Quimper,  and 
Morlaix — in  all  those  towns  which  in  Europe  come  nearest  to 
Old  France.  There  is  quiet  bustle,  subdued  trade,  prosperity 
deep,  not  noisy  ;  but  the  life  is  sleepy ;  the  rafts  float,  and  are 
not  tugged  nor  rowed ;  the  old  Norman  horses  seem  to  draw 
the  still  older  carts  without  an  effort,  and  the  very  boys  wear 
noisy  shoes  against  their  will,  and  make  a  clatter  simply  be- 
cause they  can  not  help  it. 

In  such  a  scene  it  is  impossible  to  forget  that  British 
troops  are  here  employed  as  guardians  of  the  only  true  French 
colony  in  the  world  against  the  inroads  of  the  English  race. 
"  Nos  institutions,  notre  langue,  nos  lois,"  is  the  motto  of  the 
habitants.  Their  newspapers  are  filled  with  Church  celebra- 
tions, village  fetes,  speeches  of  "  M.  le  Cure  "  at  the  harvest 
home,  announcements  by  the  "  scherif,"  speech  of  M.  Cartier 
at  the  consecration  of  Monseigneur  Laroque,  blessings  of  bells, 
of  ships ;  but  of  life,  nothing — of  mention  of  what  is  passing 
in  America,  not  a  word.  One  corner  is  given  to  the  world 
outside  America :  "  Emprunt  Pontifical,  Emission  Americaine, 
quatre  millions  de  piastres,"  heads  a  solid  column  of  holy 
finance.     The  pulse-beat  of  the  Continent  finds  no  echo  here. 

It  is  not  only  in  political  affairs  that  there  is  a  want  of  en- 
ergy in  French  or  Lower  Canada:  in  journeying  from  Port- 


60  Greater  Britain. 

land  to  Quebec,  the  moment  the  frontier  was  passed  we  seem- 
ed to  have  come  from  a  land  of  life  to  one  of  death.  No  more 
bustling  villages,  no  more  keen-eyed  farmers :  a  fog  of  un  en- 
terprise hung  over  the  land ;  roads  were  wanting,  houses  rude, 
swamps  undrained,  fields  unweeded,  plains  untilled. 

If  the  eastern  townships  and  country  round  Quebec  are  a 
wilderness,  they  are  not  a  desert.  The  country  on  the  Sague- 
nay is  both.  At  Quebec  in  summer  it  is  hot — musquitoes  are 
not  unknown  :  even  at  Tadousac,  where  the  Saguenay  flows 
into  the  St.  Lawrence,  there  is  sunlight  as  strong  as  that  of 
Paris.  Once  in  the  northern  river,  all  is  cold,  gloomy,  arctic — 
no  house,  no  boat,  no  sign  of  man's  existence,  no  beasts,  no 
birds,  although  the  St.  Lawrence  swarms  with  duck  and  loons. 
The  river  is  a  straight,  cold,  black  fiord,  walled  in  by  tremen- 
dous cliffs,  which  go  sheer  down  into  depths  to  which  their 
height  above  water  is  as  nothing ;  two  walls  of  rock,  and  a 
path  of  ice-cold,  inky  water.  Fish  there  are,  seal  and  salmon 
— that  is  all.  The  "  whales  and  porpoises,"  which  are  adver- 
tised by  the  Tadousac  folk  as  certain  to  "  disport  themselves 
daily  in  front  of  the  hotel,"  are  never  to  be  seen  in  this  earth- 
crack  of  the  Saguenay. 

The  cold  for  summer  was  intense ;  nowhere  in  the  world 
does  the  limit  of  ever-frozen  ground  come  so  far  south  as  in 
the  longitude  of  the  Saguenay.  At  night  we  had  a  Avonderful 
display  of  northern  lights.  A  white  column,  towering  to  the 
mid-skies,  rose,  died  away,  and  was  succeeded  by  broad  white 
clouds,  stretching  from  east  to  west,  and  sending  streamers 
northward.  Suddenly  there  shot  up  three  fresh  silvery  col- 
umns in  the  north,  north-west,  and  north-east,  on  which  all  the 
colors  of  the  rainbow  danced  and  played.  After  moonrise,  the 
whole  seemed  gradually  to  fade  away. 

At  Ha-ha  Bay,  the  head  of  navigation,  I  found  a  fur-buy- 
ing station  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company ;  but  that  associa- 
tion has  enough  to  answer  for  without  being  charged  with  the 
desolation  of  the  Saguenay.  The  company  has  not  here,  as 
upon  the  Red  River,  sacrificed  colonists  to  minks  and  silver- 
foxes.  There  is  something  more  blighting  than  a  monopoly 
that  oppresses  Lower  Canada.  As  I  returned  to  Quebec,  the 
boat  that  I  was  aboard  touched  at  St.  Paschal,  now  called  Ri- 
viere du  Lonp,  the  St.  Lawrence  terminus  of  the  Grand  Trunk 


Canada.  01 

lino ;  we  found  there  immense  wharves,  and  plenty  of  bells  and 
crosses,  but  not  a  single  ship,  great  or  small.  Even  in  Vir- 
ginia I  had  seen  nothing  more  disheartening. 

North  of  the  St.  Lawrence  religion  is  made  to  play  as  active 
a  part  in  politics  as  in  the  landscape.  Lower  Canada,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  French,  and  Catholic ;  Upper  Canada  is  Scotch, 
and  Presbyterian,  though  the  Episcopalians  are  strong  in 
wealth,  and  the  Irish  Catholics  in  numbers. 

Had  the  Catholics  been  united,  they  might,  since  the  fusion 
of  the  two  Canadas,  have  governed  the  whole  country :  as  it 
is,  the  Irish  and  French  neither  worship  nor  vote  together, 
and  of  late  the  Scotch  have  had  nearly  their  own  way. 

Finding  themselves  steadily  losing  ground,  the  French 
threw  in  their  lot  with  the  scheme  for  the  confederation  of 
the  provinces,  and  their  clergy  took  up  the  cause  with  a  zeal 
which  they  justified  to  their  flocks  by  pointing  out  that  the 
alternative  was  annexation  to  America,  and  possible  confisca- 
tion of  the  Church  lands. 

•Confederation  of  the  provinces  means  separation  of  the  Can- 
adas, which  regain  each  its  Parliament ;  and  the  French  Cath- 
olics begin  to  hope  that  the  Irish  of  Upper  Canada,  now  that 
they  ai'e  less  completely  overshaded  by  the  more  numerous 
French,  will  again  act  with  their  co-religionists  :  the  Catholic 
vote  in  the  new  confederation  will  be  nearly  half  the  whole. 
In  Toronto,  however,  the  Fenians  are  strong,  and  even  in 
Montreal  their  presence  is  not  unknown:  it  is  a  question 
whether  the  whole  of  the  Canadian  Irish  are  not  disaffected. 
The  Irish  of  the  chief  city  have  their  Irish  priests,  their  Ca- 
thedral of  St.  Patrick,  while  the  French  have  theirs  upon  the 
Place  d' Amies.  The  want  of  union  may  save  the  dominion 
from  the  establishment  of  Catholicism  as  a  State  Church. 

The  confederation  of  our  provinces  was  necessary,  if  Brit- 
ish North  America  was  to  have  a  chance  for  life ;  but  it  can 
not  be  said  to  be  accomplished  while  British  Columbia  and 
the  Red  River  tract  are  not  included.  To  give  Canada  an 
outlet  on  one  side  is  something,  but  communication  with  the 
Atlantic  is  a  small  matter  by  the  side  of  communication  at 
once  with  Atlantic  and  Pacific  through  British  territory.  "We 
shall  soon  have  railways  from  Halifax  to  Lake  Superior,  and 
thence  to  the  Pacific  is  but  1600  miles.     It  is  true  that  the  line 


62  Greater  Britain. 

is  far  north,  and  exposed  to  heavy  snows  and  bitter  cold ;  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  is  well  supplied  with  wood,  and,  if  it 
possesses  no  such  fertile  tracts  as  that  of  Kansas  and  Colo- 
rado, it  at  least  escapes  the  frightful  wilds  of  Bitter  Creek  and 
Mirage  Plains. 

We  are  now  even  left  in  doubt  how  long  we  shall  continue 
to  possess  so  much  as  a  route  across  the  continent  on  paper. 
Since  the  cession  of  Russian  America  to  the  United  States,  a 
map  of  North  America  has  been  published  in  which  the  name 
of  the  great  republic  sprawls  across  the  continent  from  Behr- 
ing's  Straits  to  Mexico,  with  the  "  E  "  in  "  United  "  ominously 
near  Vancouver's  Island,  and  the  "  T  "  actually  planted  upon 
British  territory.  If  we  take  up  the  British  Colwnbian,  we 
find  the  citizens  of  the  main-land  portion  of  the  provinces 
proposing  to  sell  the  island  for  twen.ty  million  dollars  to  the 
States. 

Settled  chiefly  by  Americans  from  Oregon  and  California, 
and  situated,  for  purposes  of  re-enforcement,  immigration, 
and  supply,  at  a  distance  of  not  less  than  twenty  thousand 
miles  from  home,  the  British  Pacific  colonies  can  hardly  be 
considered  strong  in  their  allegiance  to  the  Crown  :  we  have 
here  the  reductio  adabsurdum  of  home  government. 

Our  hindering  trade  by  tolerating  the  presence  of  two  sets 
of  custom-houses  and  two  sets  of  coins  between  Halifax  and 
Lake  Superior,  was  less  absurd  than  our  altogether  prevent- 
ing its  existence  now.  Under  a  so-called  confederation  of  our 
American  possessions,  we  have  left  a  country  the  size  of  civ- 
ilized Europe,  and  nearly  as  large  as  the  United  States — lying, 
too,  upon  the  track  of  commerce  and  high-road  to  China — to 
be  despotically  governed  by  a  company  of  traders  in  skins 
and  peltries,  and  to  remain  as  long  as  it  so  pleases  them  in 
the  dead  stillness  and  desertion  needed  to  insure  the  presence 
of  fur-bearing  beasts. 

"  Red  River  "  should  be  a  second  Minnesota,  Halifax  a 
second  Liverpool,  Esquimault  a  second  San  Francisco ;  but 
double  government  has  done  its  work,  and  the  outposts  of 
the  line  of  trade  are  already  in  American,  not  British  hand*. 
The  gold  mines  of  Nova  Scotia,  the  coal  mines  and  forests  of 
British  Columbia,  are  owned  in  New  England  and  New  York, 
and  the  Calif ornians  arc  expecting  the  proclamation  of  an 


Canada.  63 

American  territorial  government  in  the  capital  of  Vancouv- 
er's Island. 

As  Montana  becomes  peopled  up,  we  shall  hear  of  the  "  col- 
onization "  of  Red  River  by  citizens  of  the  United  States,  such 
as  preceded  the  hoisting  of  the  "  lone  star  "  in  Texas,  and  the 
"  bear  flag  "  in  California,  by  Fremont ;  and  resistance  by  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  will  neither  be  possible,  nor,  in  the 
interests  of  civilization,  desirable. 

Even  supposing  a  great  popular  awakening  upon  Colonial 
questions,  and  the  destruction  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  monop- 
oly, we  never  could  make  the  Canadian  dominion  strong. 
With  the  addition  of  Columbia  and  Red  River,  British 
America  would  hardly  be  as  powerful  or  popnlons  as  the 
two  north-western  States  of  Ohio  and  Illinois,  or  the  single 
State  of  New  York — one  out  of  forty-five.  "  Help  us  for 
ten  years,  and  then  we'll  help  ourselves,"  the  Canadians  say ; 
"  help  us  to  become  ten  millions,  and  then  we  will  stand 
alone ;"  but  this  becoming  ten  millions  is  not  such  an  easy 
tiling. 

The  ideas  of  most  of  us  as  to  the  size  of  the  British  terri- 
tories are  derived  from  maps  of  North  America,  made  upon 
Mercator's  projection,  which  are  grossly  out  in  high  latitudes, 
though  correct  at  the  equator.  The  Canadas  are  made  to  ap- 
pear at  least  twice  their  proper  size,  and  such  gigantic  "pro- 
portions are  given  to  the  northern  parts  of  the  Hudson  terri- 
tory that  we  are  tempted  to  believe  that  in  a  country  so  vast 
there  must  be  some  little  value.  The  true  size  is  no  more 
shown  upon  the  map  than  is  the  nine-months'  winter. 

To  Upper  Canada,  which  is  no  bad  country,  it  is  not  for 
lack  of  asking  that  population  fails  to  come.  Admirably-exe- 
cuted gazettes  give  the  fullest  information  about  the  British 
possessions  in  the  most  glowing  of  terms  ;  offices  and  agencies 
are  established  in  Liverpool,  London,  Cork,  Londonderry,  and 
a  dozen  other  cities ;  Government  immigration  agents  and  in- 
formation-offices are  to  be  found  in  every  town  in  Canada ; 
the  Government  emigrant  is  looked  after  in  health,  comfort, 
and  religion  ;  directions  of  the  fullest  kind  are  given  him  in 
the  matters  of  money,  clothes,  tools,  luggage ;  Canada,  he  is 
told  by  the  Government  papers,  possesses  perfect  religious, 
political,  and  social  freedom ;  British  subjects  step  at  once 


64  Greater  Britain. 

into  the  possession  of  political  rights ;  the  winter  is  but  brac- 
ing, the  climate  the  healthiest  in  the  world.  Millions  of  acres 
of  surveyed  Crown  lands  are  continually  in  the  market.  To 
one  who  knows  what  the  northern  forests  are  there  is  perhaps 
something  of  satire  in  the  statement  that  "  there  is  generally 
on  Crown  lands  an  unlimited  supply  of  the  best  fuel."  What 
of  that,  however  ?  The  intending  emigrant  knows  nothing  of 
the  struggle  with  the  woods,  and  fuel  is  fuel  in  Old  England. 
The  mining  of  the  precious  metals,  the  fisheries,  petroleum, 
all  are  open  to  the  settler — let  him  but  come.  Reading  these 
documents,  Ave  can  only  rub  our  eyes,  and  wonder  how  it  is 
that  human  selfishness  allows  the  Canadian  officials  to  disclose 
the  wonders  of  their  El  Dorado  to  the  outer  world,  and  invite 
all  men  to  share  blessings  which  we  should  have  expected 
them  to  keep  as  a  close  preserve  for  themselves  and  their 
neai'est  and  dearest  friends.  Taxation  in  the  States,  the  im- 
migrants are  told,  is  five  and  a  half  times  what  it  is  in  Cana- 
ada,  two  and  a  half  times  the  English  rate.  Laborers  by 
the  thousand,  merchants  and  farmers  by  the  score,  are  said  to 
be  flocking  into  Canada  to  avoid  the  taxation  of  the  Radi- 
cals. The  average  duration  of  life  in  Canada  is  37  per  cent, 
higher  than  in  the  States.  Yet,  in  the  face  of  all  these  facts, 
only  twenty  or  two-and-twenty  thousand  immigrants  come  to 
Canada  for  three  hundred  thousand  that  flock  annually  to  the 
States,  and  of  the  former  many  thousands  do  but  pass  through 
on  their  way  to  the  Great  West.  Of  the  twenty  thousand 
who  land  at  Quebec  in  each  year,  but  four  and  a  half  thou- 
sand remain  a  year  in  Canada ;  and  there  arc  a  quarter  of  a 
million  of  persons  born  in  British  America  now  naturalized  in 
the  United  States. 

The  passage  of  the  immigrants  to  the  Western  States  is 
not  for  want  of  warning.  The  Canadian  Government  adver- 
tise every  Coloradan  duel,  every  lynching  in  Montana,  every 
Opposition  speech  in  Kansas,  by  way  of  teaching  the  immi- 
grants to  respect  the  country  of  which  they  are  about  to  be- 
come free  citizens. 

It  is  an  unfortunate  fact  that  these  strange  statements  are 
not  harmless — not  harmless  to  Canada,  I  mean.  The  Pro- 
vincial Government,  by  these  publications,  seems  to  confess 
to  the  world  that  Canada  can  live  only  by  running  down  the 


Canada.  65 

great  republic.  Canadian  sympathy  for  the  rebellion  tends  to 
make  us  think  that  the  Northern  statesmen  must  not  only 
share  in  our  Old-world  confusion  of  the  notions  of  right  and 
wrong,  but  must  be  sadly  short-sighted  into  the  bargain.  It 
is  only  by  their  position  that  they  are  blinded,  for  few  coun- 
tries have  abler  men  than  Sir  James  Macdonald,  or  sounder 
statesmen  than  Cartier  or  Gait ;  but,  like  men  standing  on  the 
edge  of  a  cliff,  Canadian  statesmen  are  always  wanting  to 
jump  off.  Had  Great  Britain  left  them  to  their  own  devices, 
we  should  have  had  war  with  America  in  the  spring  of  18GC. 

The  position  of  Canada  is  in  many  ways  anomalous :  of 
the  two  chief  sections  of  our  race — that  in  Britain  and  that 
in  America — the  latter  is  again  split  in  twain,  and  one  division 
governed  from  across  the  Atlantic.  For  such  government 
there  is  no  pretext,  except  the  wishes  of  the  governed,  who 
gain  by  the  connection  men  for  their  defense,  and  the  oppor- 
tunity of  gratifying  their  spite  for  their  neighbors  at  our  ex- 
pense. Those  who  ask  why  a  connection  so  one-sided,  so  op- 
posed to  the  best  interests  of  our  race,  should  be  suffered  to 
continue,  are  answered,  now  that  the  argument  of  "  prestige  " 
is  given  up,  that  the  Canadians  are  loyal,  and  that  they  hate 
the  Americans,  to  whom,  were  it  not  for  us,  they  must  inevi- 
tably fall.  That  the  Canadians  hate  the  Americans  can  be  no 
reason  why  we  should  spend  blood  and  treasure  in  protecting 
them  against  the  consequences  of  their  hate.  The  world 
should  have  passed  the  time  when  local  dislikes  can  be  suffer- 
ed to  affect  our  policy  toward  the  other  sections  of  our  race ; 
but  even  were  it  otherwise,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  twelve  thou- 
sand British  troops,  or  a  royal  standard  hoisted  at  Ottawa,  can 
protect  a  frontier  of  two  thousand  miles  in  length  from  a  na- 
tion of  five-and-thirty  millions.  Canada,  perhaps,  can  defend 
herself,  but  we  most  certainly  can  not  defend  her :  we  pro- 
voke much  more  than  we  assist. 

As  for  Canadian  "  loyalty,"  it  appears  to  consist  merely  of 
hatred  toward  America ;  for  while  we  were  fighting  China 
and  conquering  the  rulers  of  Japan,  that  we  might  spread  free 
trade,  our  loyal  colonists  of  Canada  set  upon  our  goods  pro- 
tective duties  of  20  per  cent,  which  they  have  now  in  some 
degree  removed,  only  that  they  may  get  into  their  hands  the 
smuggling  trade  carried  on  in  breach  of  the  laws  of  our  ally, 


66  Greater  Britain. 

their  neighbor.  We  might,  at  least,  fairly  insist  that  the  con- 
nection should  cease,  unless  Canada  will  entirely  remove  her 
duties. 

At  bottom  it  would  seem  as  though  no  one  gained  by  the 
retention  of  our  hold  on  Canada.  Were  she  independent,  her 
borders  would  never  again  be  wasted  by  Fenian  hordes,  and 
she  would  escape  the  terrible  danger  of  being  the  battle-field 
in  which  European  quarrels  are  fought  out.  Canada  once  re- 
publican, the  Monroe  doctrine  would  be  satisfied,  and  its  most 
violent  partisans  would  cease  to  advocate  the  adoption  of 
other  than  moral  means  to  merge  her  territories  in  the  Union. 
An  independent  Canada  would  not  long  delay  the  railway 
across  the  continent  to  Puget  Sound,  which  a  British  bureau 
calls  impossible.  England  would  be  relieved  from  the  fear  of 
a  certain  defeat  by  America  in  the  event  of  war — a  fear  al- 
ways harmful,  even  when  war  seems  most  unlikely  ; — relieved, 
too,  from  the  cost  of  sueh  panics  as  those  of  1861  and  18C6. 

Did  Canada  stand  alone,  no  offense  that  she  could  give 
America  would  be  likely  to  unite  all  sections  of  that  country 
in  an  attempt  to  conquer  her ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  such 
an  attempt  would  be  resisted  to  the  death  by  an  armed  and 
brave  people  four  millions  strong.  As  it  is,  any  offense  to- 
ward America  committed  by  our  agents,  at  any  place  or  time, 
or  arising  out  of  the  continual  changes  of  policy  and  of  min- 
istry in  Great  Britain,  united  to  the  standing  offense  of  main- 
taining the  monarchical  principle  in  North  America,  will  bring 
upon  unhappy  Canada  the  whole  Amei'ican  nation,  indignant 
in  some  cause,  just,  or  seeming  just,  and  to  be  met  by  a  peo- 
ple deceived  into  putting  their  trust  in  a  few  regiments  of 
British  troops,  sufficient  at  the  most  to  hold  Quebec,  and  to 
be  backed  by  re-enforcements  which  coidd  never  come  in  time, 
did  public  opinion  in  Great  Britain  so  much  as  permit  their 
sailing. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  all  history  there  is  nothing  stranger 
than  the  narrowness  of  mind  that  has  led  us  to  see  in  Canada 
a  piece  of  England,  and  in  America  a  hostile  country.  There 
are  more  sons  of  British  subjects  in  America  than  in  Canada, 
by  far ;  and  the  American  looks  upon  the  Old  Country  with 
a  pride  that  can  not  be  shared  by  a  man  who  looks  to  her  to 
pay  his  soldiers. 


Canada.  67 

The  independence  of  Canada  would  put  an  immediate  end 
to  much  of  the  American  jealousy  of  Great  Britain — a  consid- 
eration which  of  itself  should  outweigh  any  claim  to  protec- 
tion which  the  Canadians  can  have  on  us.  The  position  which 
we  have  to  set  before  us  in  our  external  dealings  is,  that  we 
are  no  more  fellow-countrymen  of  the  Canadians  than  of  the 
Americans  of  the  North  or  West. 

The  capital  of  the  new  dominion  is  to  be  Ottawa,  known 
as  "  Hole  in  the  Woods  "  among  the  friends  of  Toronto  and 
Montreal,  and  once  called  Bytown.  It  consists  of  the  huge 
Parliament-house,  the  Government  printing-office,  some  house- 
less wildernesses  meant  for  streets,  and  the  hotel  where  the 
members  of  the  Legislature  "  board."  Such  was  the  senato- 
rial throng  at  the  moment  of  my  visit  that  Ave  were  thrust  into 
a  detached  building  made  of  half-inch  planks,  with  wide 
openings  between  the  boards;  and  as  the  French  Canadian 
members  were  excited  about  the  resignation  of  Mr.  Gait,  in- 
describable chattering  and  bawling  filled  the  house. 

The  view  from  the  Parliament  House  is  even  more  thor- 
oughly Canadian  than  that  from  the  terrace  at  Quebec — a  view 
of  a  land  of  rapids,  of  pine  forests,  and  of  lumberers'  homes, 
full  of  character,  but  somewhat  bleak  and  dreary ;  even  on 
the  hottest  summer's  day  it  tells  of  winter  storms  past  and  to 
come.  On  the  far  left  are  the  island-filled  reaches  of  the  Up- 
per Ottawa ;  nearer,  the  roaring  Chaudiere  Falls,  a  mile  across 
— a  mile  of  Avails  of  Avater,  of  sudden  shoots,  of  jets  of  spray. 
From  the  "  caldron  "  itself,  into  Avhich  Ave  can  hardly  see,  rises 
a  column  of  rainboAV-tinted  mist,  backed  by  distant  ranges  and 
black  avooqs,  hoav  fast  falling  before  the  settler's  axe.  BcIoav 
you  is  the  river,  swift,  and  covered  Avith  cream-like  foam ;  on 
the  right,  a  gorge — the  mouth  of  the  Rideau  Canal. 

When  surveyed  from  the  fittest  points,  the  Chaudiere  is 
but  little  behind  Niagara ;  but  it  may  be  doubted  Avhether  in 
any  fall  there  is  that  Avhich  can  be  called  sublimity.  Natural 
causes  are  too  evident :  Avater,  rushing  to  find  its  level,  falls 
from  a  ledge  of  rock.  Hoav  different  from  a  storm  upon  the 
coast,  or  from  a  September  sunset,  where  the  natural  causes 
are  so  remote  that  you  can  bring  yourself  almost  to  see  the 
immediate  hand  of  God.  It  is  excusable  in  Americans,  Avho 
have  no  sea-coast  worthy  of  the  name,  to  talk  of  Niagara  as 


08  Greater  Britain. 

the  perfection  of  the  sublime  ;  but  it  is  strange  that  a  people 
who  have  Billing  Gap  and  Bantry  Bay  should  allow  them- 
selves to  be  led  by  such  a  cry. 

Niagara  has  one  beauty  in  which  it  is  unapproached  by  the 
great  Chaudiere :  the  awesome  slowness  with  which  the  deep- 
green  flood,  in  the  centre  of  the  Horse-shoe  Falls,  rolls  rather 
than  plunges  into  the  gulf. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

UNIVERSITY    OF    MICHIGAN. 


From  the  gloom  of  Buffalo,  the  smoke  of  Cincinnati,  and  the 
dirt  of  Pittsburg,  I  should  have  been  glad  to  escape  as  soon  as 
might  be,  even  had  not  the  death  from  cholera  of  240  persons 
in  a  single  day  of  my  visit  at  the  "  Queen  City  "  warned  me 
to  fly  north.  From  a  stricken  town,  with  its  gutters  full  of 
chloride  of  lime,  and  fires  burning  in  the  public  streets,  to 
green  Michigan,  was  a  grateful  change  ;  but  I  Avas  full  of  sor- 
row at  leaving  that  richest  and  most  lovely  of  all  States — 
Ohio.  There  is  a  charm  in  the  park-like  beauty  of  the  Mo- 
nongahela  Valley,  dotted  with  vines  and  orchai'ds,  that  noth- 
ing in  Eastern  America  can  rival.  The  absence  at  once  of 
stumps  in  the  corn-fields,  and  of  untilled  or  unfenced  land, 
gives  the  "  Buckeye  State  "  a  look  of  age  that  none  of  the 
"  old  Eastern  States "  can  show.  In  corn,  in  meadow,  in 
timber-land,  Ohio  stands  alone.  Her  Indian  corn  exceeds  in 
richness  that  of  any  other  State ;  she  has  ample  stores  of  iron, 
and  coal  is  worked  upon  the  surface  in  every  Alleghany  val- 
ley. Wool,  wine,  hops,  tobacco,  all  are  raised ;  her  Catawba 
has  inspired  poems.  Every  river-side  is  clothed  with  groves 
of  oak,  of  hickory,  of  sugar-maple,  of  sycamore,  of  poplar,  and 
of  buckeye.  But,  as  I  said,  the  change  to  the  Michigan  prairie 
was  full  of  a  delightful  relief ;  it  was  Holland  after  the  Rhine, 
London  after  Paris. 

Where  men  grow  tall  there  will  maize  grow  tall,  is  a  good 
sound  rule :  limestone  makes  both  bone  and  straw.  The 
North-western  States,  inhabited  by  giant  men,  are  the  chosen 
home  of  the  most  useful  and  beautiful  of  plants,  the  maize — 


University  of  Michigan.  Gd 

in  America  called  "  corn."  For  hundreds  of  miles  the  rail- 
way track,  protected  not  even  by  a  fence  or  hedge,  runs 
through  the  towering  plants,  which  hide  all  prospect  save  that 
of  their  own  green  pyramids.  Maize  feeds  the  people ;  it 
feeds  the  cattle  and  the  hogs  that  they  export  to  feed  the 
cities  of  the  East ;  from  it  is  made  yearly,  as  an  Ohio  farmer 
told  me,  "  whisky  enough  to  float  the  ark."  Rice  is  not  more 
the  support  of  the  Chinese  than  maize  of  the  Americans. 

In  the  great  corn-field  of  the  North-western  States  dwells 
a  people  without  a  history,  without  tradition,  busy  at  hewing 
out  of  the  forest-trunks  codes  and  social  usages  of  its  own. 
The  Kansas  men  have  set  themselves  to  emancipating  women ; 
the  "  "Wolverines,"  as  the  people  of  Michigan  are  called,  have 
turned  their  heads  to  education,  and  are  teaching  the  teachers 
upon  this  point. 

The  rapidity  with  which  intellectual  activity  is  awakened 
in  the  West  is  inexplicable  to  the  people  of  NeAv  England. 
While  you  are  admiring  the  laws  of  Minnesota  and  Wiscon- 
sin, Boston  men  tell  you  that  the  resemblance  of  the  code  of 
Kansas  to  that  of  Connecticut  is  consequent  only  on  the  fact 
that  the  framers  of  the  former  possessed  a  copy  of  this  one 
New  England  code,  while  they  had  never  set  eyes  upon  the 
code  of  any  other  country  in  the  world.  "While  Yale  and 
Harvard  are  trying  in  vain  to  keep  pace  with  the  State  uni- 
versities of  Michigan  and  Kansas,  you  will  meet  in  Lowell  and 
New  Haven  men  who  apply  an  old  Russian  story  to  the  West- 
ern colleges,  and  tell  you  that  their  professors  of  languages, 
when  asked  where  they  have  studied,  reply  that  they  guess 
they  learned  to  read  and  write  in  Springfield. 

One  of  the  difficulties  of  the  New  England  colleges  has 
been  to  reconcile  university  traditions  with  democracy ;  but 
in  the  Western  States  there  is  neither  reconciliation  nor  tradi- 
tion, though  universities  are  plenty.  Probably  the  most  dem- 
ocratic school  in  the  whole  world  is  the  State  University  of 
Michigan,  situate  at  Ann  Arbor,  near  Detroit.  It  is  cheap, 
large,  practical;  twelve  hundred  students,  paying  only  the 
ten  dollars'  entrance  fee,  and  five  dollars  a  year  during  resi- 
dence, and  living  where  they  can  in  the  little  town,  attend  the 
University  to  be  prepared  to  enter  writh  knowledge  and  reso- 
lution upon  the  affairs  of  their  future  life.     A  few  only  are 


70  Greater  Britain. 

educated  by  having  their  minds  unfolded  that  they  may  be- 
come many-sided  men;  but  all  work  with  spirit,  and  with 
that  earnestness  which  is  seen  in  the  Scotch  universities  at 
home.  The  war  with  crime,  the  war  with  sin,  the  war  with 
death — Law,  Theology,  Medicine — these  are  the  three  fore- 
most of  man's  employments ;  to  these,  accordingly,  the  Uni- 
versity affords  her  chiefest  care,  and  to  one  of  these  the  stu- 
dent, his  entrance-examination  passed,  often  gives  his  entire 
time. 

These  things  are  democratic,  but  it  is  not  in  them  that  the 
essential  democracy  of  the  University  is  to  be  seen.  There 
are  at  Michigan  no  honor-lists,  no  classes  in  our  sense,  no  or- 
ders of  merit,  no  competition.  A  man  takes,  or  does  not  take, 
a  certain  degree.  The  University  is  governed,  not  by  its 
members,  not  by  its  professors,  but  by  a  parliament  of  "  re- 
gents "  appointed  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  State.  Such  are 
the  two  great  principles  of  the  democratic  University  of  the 
West. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  these  two  strange  departures 
from  the  systems  of  older  universities  were  irregularities,  in- 
troduced to  meet  the  temporary  embarrassments  incidental  to 
educational  establishments  in  young  States.  So  far  is  this 
from  being  the  case,  that,  as  I  saw  at  Cambridge,  the  clearest- 
sighted  men  of  the  older  colleges  of  America  are  trying  to  as- 
similate their  teaching  system  to  that  of  Michigan — at  least, 
in  the  one  point  of  the  absence  of  competition.  They  assert 
that  toil  performed  under  the  excitement  of  a  fierce  struggle 
between  man  and  man  is  unhealthy  work,  different  in  nature 
and  in  results  from  the  loving  labor  of  men  whose  hearts  are 
really  in  what  they  do :  toil,  in  short,  not  very  easily  distin- 
guishable from  slave-labor. 

In  the  matter  of  the  absence  of  competition,  Michigan  is 
probably  but  returning  to  the  system  of  the  European  univer- 
sities of  the  Middle  Ages,  but  the  government  by  other  than 
the  members  of  the  University  is  a  still  stranger  scheme.  It 
is  explained  when  we  look  to  the  sources  whence  the  funds  of 
the  University  are  drawn,  namely,  from  the  tax-payers  of  the 
State.  The  men  who  have  set  up  this  corporation  in  their 
midst,  and  who  tax  themselves  for  its  support,  can  not  be 
called  on,  as  they  say,  to  renounce  its  government  to  their 


University  of  Michigan.  71 

nominees,  professors  from  New  England,  unconnected  with 
the  State,  men  of  one  idea,  often  quarrelsome,  sometimes 
"  irreligious  " — for  religious  points  have  been  contested  bit- 
terly in  the  Senate  of  Ann  Arbor.  There  is  much  truth  in 
these  statements  of  the  case,  but  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the 
men  chosen  to  serve  as  "regents"  are  of  a  higher  intellectual 
stamp  than  those  appointed  to  educational  offices  in  the  Can- 
adian backwoods.  A  report  was  put  into  my  hands  at  Ot- 
tawa, in  which  a  Superintendent  of  Instruction  writes  to  the 
Minister  of  Education,  that  he  had  advised  the  rate-payers  of 
Victoria  County  not  in  future  to  elect  as  school  trustees  men 
who  can  not  read  or  write.  As  Michigan  grows  older,  she 
will,  perhaps,  seek  to  conform  to  the  practice  of  other  univer- 
sities in  this  matter  of  her  government,  but  in  the  point  of 
absence  of  competition  she  is  likely  to  continue  firm. 

Even  here  some  difficulty  is  found  in  getting  competent 
school  directors ;  one  of  them  reported  31^  children  attending 
school.  Of  another  district  its  superintendent  reports :  "  Con- 
duct of  scholars  about. the  same  as  that  of  'Young  America' 
in  general."  Some  of  the  superintendents  aim  at  jocosity,  and 
show  no  want  of  talent  in  themselves,  while  their  efforts  are 
to  demonstrate  its  deficiency  among  the  boys.  The  superin- 
tendent of  Grattan  says,  in  answer  to  some  numbered  ques- 
tions :  "  Condition  good,  improvement  fair ;  for  one-fourth  of 
one-fourth  of  the  year  in  school,  and  fifteen-sixteenths  of  the 
time  at  play.  Male  teachers  most  successful  with  the  birch ; 
female,  with  Cupid's  darts.  School-houses  in  fair  whittling  or- 
der. Apparatus:  shovel, none;  tongs, ditto;  poker, one.  Con- 
duct of  scholars  like  that  of  parents — good,  bad,  and  indifferent. 
No  minister  in  town — sorry ;  no  lawyer — good  !"  The  super- 
intendents of  Manlius  township  report  that  Districts  1  and  2 
have  buildings  "  fit  (in  winter)  only  for  the  polar  bear,  wal- 
rus, reindeer,  Russian  sable,  or  Siberian  bat ;"  and  they  go 
on  to  say,  "  Our  children  read  every  thing,  from  Mr.  Noodle's 
Essays  on  Matrimony  to  Artemus  Ward's  Lecture  on  First 
Principles  of  American  Government."  Another  report  from 
a  very  new  county  runs:  "Sunday-schools  afford  a  little 
reading-matter  to  the  children.  Character  of  matter  most 
read — battle,  murder,  and  sudden  death."  A  third  states  that 
the  teachers  are  meanly  paid,  and  goes  on :  "  If  the  teaching 


72  Greater  Britain. 

is  no  better  than  the  pay,  it  must  be  like  the  soup  that  the 
rebels  gave  the  prisoners."  A  superintendent,  reporting  that 
the  success  of  the  teachers  is  greater  than  their  qualifications 
warrant,  says :  "  The  reason  is  to  be  found  in  the  Yankeeish 
adaptability  of  even  Wolverines." 

After  all,  it  is  hard  even  to  pass  jokes  at  the  expense  of  the 
North-western  people.  A  population  who  would  maintain 
schools  on  such  a  footing  under  difficulties  apparently  over- 
whelming was  the  source  from  which  to  draw  Union  Volun- 
teers such  as  those  who,  after  the  war,  returned  to  their  North- 
ern homes,  I  have  been  told,  shocked  and  astonished  at  the 
ignorance  and  debasement  of  the  Southern  whites. 

The  system  of  elective  studies  pursued  at  Michigan  is  one 
to  which  we  are  year  by  year  tending  in  the  English  univer- 
sities. As  sciences  multiply  and  deepen,  it  becomes  more  and 
more  impossible  that  a  "  general  course"  system  can  produce 
men  fit  to  take  their  places  in  the  world.  Cambridge  has  at- 
tempted to  set  up  both,  and,  giving  her  students  the  choice, 
bids  them  pursue  one  branch  of  study  with  a  view  to  honors, 
or  take  a  less-valued  degree  requiring  some  slight  proficiency 
in  many  things.  Michigan  denies  that  the  stimulus  of  honor 
examinations  should  be  connected  with  the  elective  system. 
With  her,  men  first  graduate  in  science,  or  in  an  arts  degree, 
which  bears  a  close  resemblance  to  the  English  "  poll,"  and 
then  pursue  their  elected  study  in  a  course  which  leads  to  no 
university  distinction,  which  is  free  from  the  struggle  for  place 
and  honors.  These  objections  to  "honors"  rest  upon  a  more 
solid  foundation  than  a  mere  democratic  hatred  of  inequality 
of  man  and  man.  Repute  as  a  writer,  as  a  practitioner,  is  val- 
ued by  the  Ann  Arbor  man,  and  the  Wolverines  do  not  follow 
the  Ephesians,  and  tell  men  who  excel  among  them  to  go  and 
excel  elsewhere.  The  Michigan  professors  say,  and  Dr. 
Hedges  bears  them  out,  that  a  far  higher  average  of  true  work 
and  real  knowledge  is  obtained  under  this  system  of  independ- 
ent work  than  is  dreamed  of  in  colleges  where  competition 
rules.  "  A  higher  average  "  is  all  they  say,  and  they  acknowl- 
edge frankly  that  there  is  here  and  there  a  student  to  be  found 
to  whom  competition  would  do  good.  As  a  rule,  they  tell  us, 
this  is  not  the  case.  Unlimited  battle  between  man  and  man 
for  place  is  suffieiently  the  bane  of  the  world  not  to  be  made 


University  of  Michigan.  73 

the  curse  of  schools :  competition  breeds  every  evil  which  it 
is  the  aim  of  education,  the  duty  of  a  university,  to  suppress  : 
pale  faces  caused  by  excessive  toil,  feverish  excitement  that 
prevents  true  work,  a  hatred  of  the  subject  on  which  the  toil 
is  spent,  jealousy  of  best  friends,  systematic  depreciation  of 
men's  talents,  rejection  of  all  reading  that  will  not  "pay," 
extreme  unhealthy  cultivation  of  memory,  general  degrada- 
tion of  labor — all  these  evils,  and  many  more,  are  charged  upon 
the  competition  system.  Every  thing  -that  our  professors 
have  to  say  of  "  cram,"  these  American  thinkers  apply  to  com- 
petition.    Strange  doctrines  these  for  Young  America ! 

Of  the  practical  turn  which  we  should  naturally  expect  to 
find  in  the  university  of  a  bran-new  State  I  found  evidence  in 
the  regulation  which  prescribes  that  the  degree  of  Master  of 
Arts  shall  not  be  conferred  as  a  matter  of  course  upon  gradu- 
ates of  three  years'  standing,  but  only  upon  such  as  have  pur- 
sued professional  or  general  scientific  studies  during  that  pe- 
riod. Even  in  these  cases  an  examination  before  some  one  of 
the  faculties  is  required  for  the  Master's  degree.  I  was  told 
that  for  the  Medical  degree  four  years  of  "  reputable  "  practice 
is  received  instead  of  certain  courses. 

In  her  special  and  selected  studies,  Michigan  is  as  merely 
practical  as  Swift's  University  of  Brobdingnag ;  but,  standing 
far  above  the  ordinary  arts  or  science  courses,  there  is  a 
"  University  course  "  designed  for  those  who  have  already 
taken  the  Bachelor's  degree.  It  is  harder  to  say  what  this 
course  includes  than  what  it  does  not.  The  twenty  heads 
range  over  philology,  philosophy,  art,  and  science ;  there  is  a 
branch  of  "  criticism,"  one  of  "  arts  of  design,"  one  of  "  fine 
arts."  Astronomy,  ethics,  and  Oriental  languages  are  all  em- 
braced in  a  scheme  brought  into  working  order  within  ten 
years  of  the  time  when  Michigan  was  a  wilderness,  and  the 
college-yard  an  Indian  hunting-ground. 

Michigan  entered  upon  education-work  very  early  in  her 
history  as  a  State.  In  1850  her  Legislature  commissioned  the 
Hon.  Ira  Mayhew  to  prepare  a  work  on  education  for  circula- 
tion throughout  America.  Her  progress  has  been  as  rapid  as 
her  start  was  good ;  her  natural  history  collection  is  already 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  in  America ;  her  medical  school 
is  almost  unequalled,  and  students  flow  to  her  even  from  New 

D 


74  Greater  Britain. 

England  and  from  California,  while  from  New  York  she  draws 
a  hundred  men  a  year.  In  only  one  point  is  Ann  Arbor  any- 
where but  in  the  van  :  she  has  hitherto  followed  the  New  En- 
gland colleges  in  excluding  women.  The  State  University  of 
Kansas  has  not  shown  the  same  exclusiveness  that  has  charac- 
terized the  conduct  of  the  rulers  of  Michigan  :  women  are  ad- 
mitted not  only  to  the  classes,  but  to  the  professorships  at 
Lawrence. 

This  North-western  institution  at  Ann  Arbor  was  not  be- 
hind even  Harvard  in  the  war:  it  supplied  the  Union  army 
with  1000  men.  The  17th  Regiment  of  Michigan  Volunteers, 
mainly  composed  of  teachers  and  Ann  Arbor  students,  has  no 
cause  to  fear  the  rivalry  of  any  other  record ;  and  such  was 
the  effect  of  the  war,  that  in  1860  there  were  in  Michigan 
2600  male  to  5350  female  teachers,  whereas  now  there  are  but 
1300  men  to  7500  women. 

So  proud  are  Michigan  men  of  their  Roll  of  Honor  that 
they  publish  it  at  full  length  in  the  calendar  of  the  University. 
Every  "  class  "  from  the  foundation  of  the  schools  shows  some 
graduates  distinguished  in  their  country's  service  during  the 
suppression  of  the  rebellion.  The  Hon.  Oramel  Hosford,  Su- 
perintendent of  Public  Instruction  in  Michigan,  reports  that, 
owing  to  the  presence  of  crowds  of  returned  soldiers,  the 
schools  of  the  State  are  filled  almost  to  the  limit  of  their  ca- 
pacity, while  some  are  compelled  to  close  their  doors  against 
the  thronging  crowds.  Captains,  colonels,  generals  are  among 
the  students  now  humbly  learning  in  the  Ann  Arbor  Univer- 
sity Schools. 

The  State  of  Michigan  is  peculiar  in  the  form  that  she  has 
given  to  her  higher  teaching,  but  in  no  way  jDeculiar  in  the  at- 
tention she  bestows  on  education.  Teaching,  high  and  low,  is 
a  passion  in  the  West,  and  each  of  these  young  States  has  es- 
tablished a  University  of  the  highest  order,  and  placed  in  every 
township  not  only  schools,  but  public  libraries,  supported  from 
the  rates,  and  managed  by  the  people. 

Not  only  have  the  appropriations  for  educational  purposes 
by  each  State  been  large,  but  those  of  the  Federal  Government 
have  been  upon  the  most  splendid  scale.  What  has  been  done 
in  the  Eastern  and  the  Central  States  no  man  can  tell,  but 
even  west  of  the  Mississippi  twenty-two  million  acres  have  al- 


The  Pacific  Eailroad.  75 

ready  been  granted  for  such  purposes,  while  fifty-six  million 
more  are  set  aside  for  similar  gifts. 

The  Americans  are  not  forgetful  of  their  Puritan  tradi- 
tions. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  PACIFIC  EAILROAD. 

When  the  companions  of  the  explorer  Cartier  found  that 
the  rapids  at  Montreal  were  not  the  end  of  all  navigation,  as 
they  had  feared,  but  that  above  them  there  commenced  a  sec- 
ond and  boundless  reach  of  deep,  still  waters,  they  fancied 
they  had  found  the  long-looked-for  route  to  China,  and  cried, 
"  La  Chine  !"  So  the  story  goes,  and  the  name  has  stuck  to 
the  place. 

Up  to  1861  the  Canadians  remained  in  the  belief  that  they 
were  at  least  the  potential  possessors  of  the  only  possible  road 
for  the  China  trade  of  the  future,  for  in  that  year  a  Canadian 
Government  paper  declared  that  the  Rocky  Mountains  south  of 
British  territory  were  impassable  for  railroads.  Maps  showed 
that  from  St.  Louis  to  San  Francisco  the  distance  was  twice 
that  from  the  head  of  navigation  on  Lake  Superior  to  the  Brit- 
ish Pacific  ports. 

America  has  gone  through  a  five  years'  agony  since  that 
time ;  but  now,  in  the  first  days  of  peace,  we  find  that  the 
American  Pacific  Railroad,  growing  at  the  average  rate  of  two 
miles  a  day  at  one  end,  and  one  mile  a  day  at  the  other,  will 
stretch  from  sea  to  sea  in  1S69  or  1870,  while  the  British  line 
remains  a  dream. 

Not  only  have  the  Rocky  Mountains  turned  out  to  be  passa- 
ble, but  the  engineers  have  found  themselves  compelled  to  de- 
cide on  the  conflicting  claims  of  passes  without  number. 
Wall-like  and  frowning  as  the  Rocky  Mountains  are  when 
seen  from  the  plains,  the  rolling  gaps  are  many,  and  they  are 
easier  crossed  by  railway  lines  than  the  less  lofty  chains  of 
Europe.  From  the  heat  of  the  country,  the  snow-line  lies 
high ;  the  chosen  pass  is  in  the  latitude  of  Constantinople  or 
Oporto.     The  dryness  of  the  air  of  the  centre  of  a  vast  conti- 


The  Pacific  Hailroad.  77 

ncnt  prevents  the  fall  of  heavy  snows  or  rains  in  winter.  At 
eight  or  nine  thousand  feet  above  the  sea,  m  the  Black  Hills 
or  Eastern  Piedmont,  the  drivers  on  the  Pacific  line  will  have 
slighter  snow-drifts  to  encounter  than  their  brothers  on  the 
Grand  Trunk  or  the  Camden  and  Amboy  at  the  sea -level. 
On  the  other  hand,  fuel  and  water  are  scarce,  and  there  is  an 
endless  succession  of  smaller  snowy  chains  which  have  to  be 
crossed  upon  the  Grand  Plateau,  or  basin  of  the  Great  Salt 
Lake.  Whatever  the  difficulties,  in  1869  or  1870  the  line 
will  be  an  accompli  shed  fact. 

In  the  act  creating  the  Pacific  Railroad  Company,  passed 
in  1862,  the  company  were  bound  to  complete  their  line  at 
the  rate  of  a  hundred  miles  a  year.  They  are  completing  it 
at  more  than  three  times  that  rate. 

When  the  act  is  examined,  it  ceases  to  be  strange  that  the 
road  should  be  pushed  with  extraordinary  energy  and  speed, 
so  numerous  are  the  baits  offered  to  the  companies  to  hasten 
its  completion.  Money  is  to  be  advanced  them ;  land  is  to  be 
given  them  for  every  mile  they  finish — on  a  generous  scale  while 
the  line  is  on  the  plains,  on  three  times  the  scale  when  it  reach- 
es the  most  rugged  tracts.  These  grants  alone  are  estimated 
at  twenty  millions  of  acres.  Besides  the  alternate  sections,  a 
width  of  400  feet,  with  additional  room  for  works  and  sta- 
tions, is  granted  for  the  line.  The  Californian  Company  is 
tempted  by  similar  offers  to  a  race  with  the  Union  Pacific, 
and  each  company  is  struggling  to  lay  the  most  miles,  and  get 
the  most  land  upon  the  great  basin.  It  is  the  interest  of  the 
Eastern  Company  that  the  junction  should  be  as  far  as  possi- 
ble to  the  west ;  of  the  Western,  that  it  should  be  as  far  as 
possible  to  the  east.  The  result  is  an  average  laying  of  three 
and  an  occasional  construction  of  four  miles  a  day.  If  we 
look  to  the  progress  at  both  ends,  we  find  as  much  sometimes 
laid  in  a  day  as  a  bullock-train  could  travel.  So  fast  do  the 
head-quarters  "  cities  "  keep  moving  forward,  that  at  the  Cal- 
ifornian end  the  superintendent  wished  me  to  believe  that 
whenever  his  chickens  heard  a  wagon  pass,  they  threw  them- 
selves upon  their  backs,  and  held  up  their  legs,  that  they  might 
be  tied,  and  thrown  into  the  cart  for  a  fresh  move.  "  They 
are  true  birds  of  passage,"  he  said. 

When  the  iron  trains  are  at  the  front,  the  laying  will  for  a 


78  Greater  Britain. 

short  time  proceed  at  the  rate  of  nine  yards  in  every  fifteen 
seconds  ;  but  three  or  four  hundred  tons  of  rails  have  to  be 
brought  up  every  day  upon  the  single  track,  and  it  is  in  this 
that  the  time  is  lost. 

The  advance  carriages  of  the  construction-train  are  well  sup- 
plied with  rifles  hung  from  the  roofs ;  but  even  when  the  In- 
dians forget  their  amaze,  and  attack  the  "  city  upon  wheels  " 
or  tear  up  the  track,  they  are  incapable  of  destroying  the  line 
so  fast  as  the  machinery  can  lay  it  down.  "  Soon,"  as  a  Den- 
ver paper  said  during  my  stay  in  the  Mountain  City,  "  the 
iron  horse  will  sniff  the  Alpine  breeze  upon  the  summit  of  the 
Black  Hills  9000  feet  above  the  city ;"  and  upon  the  plateau, 
where  deer  are  scarce  and  buffalo  unknown,  the  Indians  have 
all  but  disappeared.  The  worst  Indian  country  is  already 
crossed,  and  the  red  men  have  sullenly  followed  the  buffalo  to 
the  south,  and  occupy  the  country  between  Kansas  State  and 
Denver,  contenting  themselves  with  preventing  the  construc- 
tion of  the  Santa  Fe  and  Denver  routes  to  California.  Both 
for  the  end  in  view,  and  the  energy  with  which  it  is  pursued, 
the  Pacific  Railroad  will  stand  first  among  the  achievements 
of  our  times. 

If  the  end  to  be  kept  in  view  in  the  construction  of  the 
first  Pacific  Railroad  line  were  merely  the  traffic  from  China 
and  Japan  to  Europe,  or  the  shortest  route  from  San  Francisco 
to  Hampton  Roads,  the  Kansas  route  through  St.  Louis,  Den- 
ver, and  the  Berthoud  Pass  would  be,  perhaps,  the  best  and 
shortest  of  those  within  the  United  States ;  but  the  Saskatche- 
wan line  through  British  territory,  with  Halifax  and  Puget 
Sound  for  ports,  would  be  still  more  advantageous.  As  it  is, 
the  true  question  seems  to  be,  not  the  trade  between  the  Pa- 
cific and  Great  Britain,  but  between  Asia  and  America,  for 
Pennsylvania  and  Ohio  must  be  the  manufacturing  countries 
of  the  next  fifty  years. 

Yfhatever  our  theory,  the  fact  is  plain  enough  :  in  IS 70  we 
shall  reach  San  Francisco  from  London  in  less  time  than  by 
the  severest  travelling  I  can  reach  it  from  Denver  in  1866. 

Wherever,  in  the  States,  North  and  South  have  met  in  con- 
flict, North  has  won.  New  York  has  beaten  Norfolk ;  Chi- 
cago, in  spite  of  its  inferior  situation,  has  beaten  the  older  St. 
Louis.     In  the  same  way,  Omaha,  or  cities  still  farther  north, 


The  Pacific  Railroad.  79 

will  carry  off  the  trade  from  Leavenworth,  Lawrence,  and  Kan- 
sas City.  Ultimately  Puget  Sound  may  beat  San  Francisco 
in  the  race  for  the  Pacific  trade,  and  the  Southern  cities  be- 
come still  less  able  to  keep  their  place  than  they  have  been 
hitherto.  Time  after  time  Chicago  has  thrown  out  intercept- 
ing lines,  and  diverted  from  St.  Louis  trade  which  seemed  of 
necessity  to  belong  to  her ;  and  the  success  of  the  Union  Pa- 
cific line,  and  failure  of  the  Kansas  road,  is  a  fresh  proof  of 
the  superior  energy  of  the  Northern  to  the  Southern  city. 
This  time  a  fresh  element  enters  into  the  calculation,  and  de- 
clares for  Chicago.  The  great  circle  route,  the  true  straight 
line,  is  in  these  great  distances  shorter  by  fifty  or  a  hundred 
miles  than  the  straight  lines  of  the  maps  and  charts,  and  the 
Platte  route  becomes  not  only  the  natural,  but  the  shortest 
route  from  sea  to  sea. 

Chicago  has  a  great  advantage  over  St.  Louis  in  her  com- 
parative freedom  from  the  cholera,  which  yearly  attacks  the 
Missourian  city.  During  my  stay  in  St.  Louis  the  deaths 
from  cholera  alone  were  known  to  have  reached  200  a  day,  in 
a  population  diminished  by  flight  to  180,000.  A  quarantine 
was  established  on  the  river  ;  the  sale  of  fruit  and  vegetables 
prohibited  ;  prisoners  released  on  condition  that  they  should 
work  at  burying  the  dead  ;  and  funeral  corteges  were  forbid- 
den. Chicago  herself,  unreached  by  the  plague,  was  scatter- 
ing handbills  on  every  Western  railroad  line,  warning  immi- 
grants against  St.  Louis. 

The  Missourians  have  relied  overmuch  upon  the  Mississip- 
pi River,  and  have  forgotten  that  railroads  are  superseding 
steam-boats  every  day.  Chicago,  on  the  other  hand,  which 
ten  years  ago  was  the  twentieth  city  in  America,  is  probably 
by  this  time  the  third.  As  a  centre  of  thought,  political  and 
religious,  she  stands  second  only  to  Boston,  and  her  Wabash 
and  Michigan  avenues  are  among  the  most  beautiful  of 
streets. 

One  of  the  chief  causes  of  the  future  wealth  of  America  is 
to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  all  her  "inland"  towns  are  ports. 
The  State  of  Michigan  lies  between  500  and  600  miles  from 
the  ocean,  but  the  single  State  has  upon  the  great  lakes  a 
coast  of  1500  miles.  From  Fort  Benton  to  the  sea  by  water 
is  nearly  4000  miles ;  but  the  post  is  a  much-used  steam-boat 


80  Greater  Britain. 

port,  though  more  distant,  even  in  the  air-line,  from  the  nearest 
sea  upon  the  same  side  the  dividing  range,  than  is  the  White 
Sea  from  the  Persian  Gulf.  Put  it  in  which  way  you  would, 
Europe  could  not  hold  this  navigation. 

A  great  American  city  is  almost  invariably  placed  at  a 
point  where  an  important  railroad  finds  an  outport  on  a  lake 
or  river.  This  is  no  adaptation  to  railways  of  the  Limerick 
saying  about  rivers,  namely,  that  Providence  has  everywhere 
so  placed  them  as  to  pass  through  the  great  towns ;  for  in 
America  railways  precede  population,  and  when  mapped  out 
and  laid,  they  are  but  tram-ways  in  the  desert.  There  is  no 
great  wonder  in  this  when  we  remember  that  158,000,000  acres 
of  land  have  been  up  to  this  time  granted  to  railroads  in 
America. 

One  tendency  of  a  costly  railroad  system  is  that  few  lines 
will  be  made,  and  trade  being  thus  driven  into  certain  un- 
changing routes,  a  small  number  of  cities  will  flourish  greatly, 
and,  by  acting  as  housing  stations  or  as  ports,  Avill  rise  to 
enormous  wealth  and  population.  Where  a  system  of  cheap 
railways  is  adopted,  there  will  be,  year  by  year,  a  tendency  to 
multiply  lines  of  traffic,  and  consequently  to  multiply  also  ports 
and  seats  of  trade — a  tendency,  however,  wdiich  may  be  moi*e 
than  neutralized  by  any  special  circumstances  which  may  cause 
the  lines  of  transit  to  converge  rather  than  run  parallel  to  one 
another.  Of  the  system  of  costly  grand  trunk  lines  we  have 
an  instance  in  India,  where  we  see  the  creation  of  Umritsar  and 
the  prosperity  of  Calcutta  alike  due  to  our  single  great  Ben- 
gal line ;  of  the  converging  system,  we  have  excellent  instances 
in  Chicago  and  Bombay ;  while  we  see  the  plan  of  parallel 
lines  in  action  here  in  Kansas,  and  causing  the  comparative 
equality  of  progress  manifested  in  Leavenworth,  in  Atchison, 
in  Omaha.  The  coasts  of  India  swarmed  with  ports  till  our 
trunk  lines  ruined  Goa  and  Surat  to  advance  Bombay,  and  a 
hundred  village  ports  to  push  our  factory  at  Calcutta,  found- 
ed by  Charnock  as  late  as  1690,  but  now  grown  to  be  the  third 
or  fourth  city  of  the  empire. 

Of  the  dozen  chaotic  cities  which  are  struggling  for  the 
honor  of  becoming  the  future  capital  of  the  West,  Leaven- 
worth, with  20,000  people,  three  daily  papers,  an  opera-house, 
and  200  drinking-saloons,  was,  at  the  time  of  my  visit  in  I860, 


The  Pacific  Railroad.  81 

somewhat  ahead  of  Omaha,  with  its  12,000,  two  papers,  and 
a  single  "  one-horse  "  theatre,  though  the  Northern  city  tied 
Leavenworth  in  the  point  of  "  saloons." 

Omaha,  Leavenworth,  Kansas  City,  Wyandotte,  Atchison, 
Topeka,  Leeompton,  and  Lawrence,  each  praises  itself,  and  runs 
down  its  neighbor.  Leavenworth  claims  to  be  so  healthy  that 
when  it  lately  became  necessary  to  "inaugurate"  the  new 
grave-yard, "  they  had  to  shoot  a  man  on  purpose  " — a  change 
since  the  days  when  the  Southern  Border  Ruffians  were  in  the 
habit  of  parading  its  streets,  bearing  the  scalps  of  Abolition- 
ists stuck  on  poles.  On  the  other  hand,  a  Nebraska  man,  when 
asked  whether  the  Kansas  people  were  fairly  honest,  said : 
"  Don't  know  about  honest,  but  they  do  say  as  how  the  folk 
around  take  in  their  stone  fences  every  night."  Lawrence, 
the  State  capital,  which  is  on  the  dried-up  Kansas  River, 
sneeringly  says  of  all  the  new  towns  on  the  Missouri  that  the 
boats  that  ply  between  them  are  so  dangerous  that  the  fare 
is  collected  in  installments  every  five  minutes  throughout  the 
trip.  Next  after  the  jealousy  between  two  Australian  colonies, 
there  is  nothing  equal  to  the  hatreds  between  cities  competing 
for  the  same  trade.  Omaha  has  now  the  best  chance  of  be- 
coming the  capital  of  the  Far  West,  but  Leavemvorth  will  no 
doubt  continue  to  be  the  chief  town  of  Kansas. 

The  progress  of  the  smaller  cities  is  amazing.  Pistol-shots 
by  day  and  night  are  frequent,  but  trade  and  development 
are  little  interfered  with  by  such  incidents  as  these ;  and  as 
the  village-cities  are  peopled  up,  the  pioneers,  shunning  their 
fellows,  keep  pushing  westward,  seeking  new  "  locations." 
"You're  the  second  man  I've  seen  this  fall!  Darn  me, ef 
'tain't  'bout  time  to  varmose  out  westerly — y,"  is  the  standing- 
joke  of  the  "  frontier-bars  "  against  each  other. 

At  St.  Louis  I  had  met  my  friend  Mr.  HepAVorth  Dixon, 
just  out  from  England,  and  with  him  I  visited  the  Kansas 
towns,  and  then  pushed  through  Waumego  to  Manhattan,  the 
terminus  (for  the  day)  of  the  Kansas  Pacific  line.  Here  we 
were  thrust  into  what  space  remained  between  forty  leathern 
mail-bags  and  the  canvas  roof  of  the  mule-drawn  ambulance, 
which  was  to  be  at  once  our  prison  for  six  nights,  and  our 
fort  upon  wheels  against  the  Indians. 

D  2 


82  Greater  Britain. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

OMPHALISM. 

Dashing  through  a  grove  of  cottonwood-trees  draped  in 
bignonia  and  ivy,  we  came  out  suddenly  upon  a  charming 
scene ;  a  range  of  huts  and  forts  crowning  a  long,  low  hill 
seamed  with  many  a  timber-clothed  ravine,  while  the  clear 
stream  of  the  Republican  fork  wreathed  itself  about  the  woods 
and  bluffs.  The  block-house,  over  which  floated  the  stars  and 
stripes,  Avas  Fort  Riley,  the  Hyde  Park  Corner  from  which 
continents  are  to  measure  all  their  miles ;  the  "  capital  of  the 
universe,"  or  "  centre  of  the  world."  Not  that  it  has  always 
been  so.  Geographers  will  be  glad  to  learn  that  not  only 
does  the  earth  gyrate,  but  that  the  centre  of  its  crust  also 
moves  :  within  the  last  ten  years  it  has  removed  westward 
into  Kansas  from  Missouri,  from  Independence  to  Fort  Riley. 
The  contest  for  centreship  is  no  new  thing.  Herodotus  held 
that  Greece  was  the  very  middle  of  the  world,  and  that  the 
unhappy  Orientals  were  frozen,  and  the  yet  more  unfortunate 
Atlantic  Indians  baked  every  afternoon  of  their  poor  lives  in 
order  that  the  sun  might  shine  on  Greece  at  noon ;  London 
plumes  herself  on  being  the  "  centre  of  the  terrestrial  globe ;" 
Boston  is  the  "hub  of  the  hull  universe,"  though  the  latter 
claim  is  less  physical  than  moral,  I  believe.  In  Fort  Riley, 
the  Western  men  seem  to  have  found  the  physical  centre  of 
the  United  States,  but  they  claim  for  the  Great  Plains  as  well 
the  intellectual  as  the  political  leadership  of  the  whole  conti- 
nent. These  hitherto  untrodden  tracts,  they  tell  you,  form  the 
heart  of  the  empire,  from  which  the  life-blood  must  be  driven 
to  the  extremities.  Geographical  and  political  centres  must 
ultimately  coincide. 

Connected  with  this  belief  is  another  Western  theory — 
that  the  powers  of  the  future  must  be  "  Continental."  Ger- 
many, or  else  Russia,  is  to  absorb  all  Asia  and  Europe  except 
Britain.  North  America  is  already  cared  for,  as  the  gradual 
extinction  of  the  Mexicans  and  absorption  of  the  Canadians 
they  consider  certain.     As  for  South  America,  the  Californians 


Omphalism.  83 

are  already  planning  an  occupation  of  Western  Brazil,  on  the 
ground  that  the  continental  power  of  South  America  must 
start  from  the  head-waters  of  the  great  rivers,  and  spread  sea- 
ward down  the  streams.  Even  in  the  Brazilian  climate  they 
believe  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  is  destined  to  become  the  domi- 
nant race. 

The  success  of  this  omphalism,  this  government  from  the 
centre,  will  be  brought  about,  in  the  Western  belief,  by  the 
necessity  under  which  the  natives  on  the  head-waters  of  all 
streams  will  find  themselves  of  having  the  outlets  in  their 
hands.  Even  if  it  be  true  that  railways  are  beating  rivers, 
still  the  railways  must  also  lead  seaward  to  the  ports,  and  the 
need  for  their  control  is  still  felt  by  the  producers  in  the  cen- 
tre countries  of  the  continent.  The  Upper  States  must  every- 
where command  the  Lower,  and  salt-water  despotism  find  its 
end. 

The  Americans  of  the  Valley  States,  who  fought  all  the 
more  heartily  in  the  Federal  cause  from  the  fact  that  they 
were  battling  for  the  freedom  of  the  Mississippi  against  the 
men  who  held  its  mouth,  look  forward  to  the  time  when  they 
will  have  to  assert,  peaceably  but  with  firmness,  their  right  to 
the  freedom  of  their  railways  through  the  Northern  Atlantic 
States.  Whatever  their  respect  for  New  England,  it  can  not 
be  expected  that  they  are  forever  to  permit  Illinois  and  Ohio 
to  be  neutralized  in  the  Senate  by  Rhode  Island  and  Vermont. 
If  it  goes  hard  with  Ncav  England,  it  will  go  still  harder  with 
New  York ;  and  the  Western  men  look  forward  to  the  day 
when  Washington  will  be  removed,  Congress  and  all,  to  Co- 
lumbus or  Fort  Riley. 

The  singular  wideness  of  Western  thought,  always  verging 
on  extravagance,  is  traceable  to  the  width  of  Western  land. 
The  immensity  of  the  continent  produces  a  kind  of  intoxica- 
tion ;  there  is  moral  dram-drinking  in  the  contemplation  of 
the  map.  No  Fourth  of  July  Oration  can  come  up  to  the 
plain  facts  contained  in  the  Land  Commissioners'  Report. 
The  public  domain  of  the  United  States  still  consists  of  one 
thousand  five  hundred  millions  of  acres ;  there  are  two  hun- 
dred thousand  square  miles  of  coal-lands  in  the  country,  ten 
times  as  much  as  in  all  the  remaining  world.  In  the  Western 
Territories  not  yet  States,  there  is  land  sufficient  to  bear,  at  the 


S±  Greater  Britain. 

English  population-rate,  five  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  hu- 
man beings. 

It  is  strange  to  see  how  the  Western  country  dwarfs  the 
Eastern  ►States.  Buffalo  is  called  a  "  Western  city ;"  yet  from 
New  York  to  Buffalo  is  only  three  hundred  and  fifty  miles, 
and  Buffalo  is  but  seven  hundred  miles  to  the  west  of  the 
most  eastern  point  in  all  the  United  States.  On  the  other 
hand,  from  Buffalo  we  can  go  two  thousand  five  hundred 
miles  westward  without  quitting  the  United  States.  "  The 
West "  is  eight  times  as  wide  as  the  Atlantic  States,  and  will 
soon  be  eight  times  as  strong. 

The  conformation  of  North  America  is  widely  different  to 
that  of  any  other  continent  on  the  globe.  In  Europe,  the  gla- 
ciers of  the  Alps  occupy  the  centre  point,  and  shed  the  waters 
toward  each  of  the  surrounding  seas  :  confluence  is  almost 
unknown.  So  it  is  in  Asia  :  there  the  Indus  flowing  into  the 
Arabian  Gulf,  the  Oxus  into  the  Sea  of  Aral,  the  Ganges  into 
the  Bay  of  Bengal,  the  Yangtse  Kiang  into  the  Pacific,  and 
the  Yenesei  into  the  Arctic  Ocean,  all  take  their  rise  in  the 
central  table-land.  In  South  America,  the  mountains  form  a 
wall  upon  the  west,  whence  the  rivers  flow  eastward  in  par- 
allel lines.  In  North  America  alone  are  there  mountains 
on  each  coast,  and  a  trough  between,  into  which  the  rivers 
flow  together,  giving  in  a  single  valley  23,000  miles  of  nav- 
igable stream  to  be  plowed  by  steam-ships.  The  map  pro- 
claims the  essential  unity  of  North  America.  Political  geog-. 
raphy  might  be  a  more  interesting  study  than  it  has  yet  been 
made. 

In  reaching  Leavenworth,  I  had  crossed  two  of  the  five  di- 
visions of  America :  the  other  three  lie  before  me  on  my  way 
to  San  Francisco.  The  eastern  slopes  of  the  Alleghanies,  or 
Atlantic  coast ;  their  western  slopes ;  the  Great  Plains ;  the 
Grand  Plateau,  and  the  Pacific  coast — these  are  the  five  divis- 
ions. Fort  Riley,  the  centre  of  the  United  States,  is  upon 
the  border  of  the  third  division,  the  Great  Plains.  The  At- 
lantic coast  is  poor  and  stony,  but  the  slight  altitude  of  the 
Alleghany  chains  has  prevented  it  being  a  hinderance  to  the 
passage  of  population  to  the  West :  the  second  of  the  divis- 
ions is  now  the  richest  and  most  powerful  of  the  five ;  but 
the  wave  of  immigration  is  crossing  the  Mississippi  and  Mis- 


Letter  from  Denver.  85 

souri  into  the  Great  Plains,  and  here  at  Fort  Riley  we  are 
upon  the  limit  of  civilization. 

This  spot  is  not  only  the  centre  of  the  United  States  and 
of  the  continent,  but,  if  Denver  had  contrived  to  carry  the  Pa- 
cific Railroad  by  the  Berthoud  Pass,  would  have  been  the  cen- 
tre station  upon  what  Governor  Gilpin  of  Colorado  calls  the 
"  Asiatic  and  European  railway  line."  As  it  is,  Columbus  in 
Nebraska  has  somewhat  a  better  chance  of  becoming  the 
Washington  of  the  future  than  has  this  block-house. 

Quitting  Fort  Riley,  we  found  ourselves  at  once  upon  the 
Plains.  No  more  sycamore,  and  white-oak,  and  honey-locust ; 
no  more  of  the  rich  deep  green  of  the  cottonwood  groves ;  but 
yellow  earth,  yellow  flowers,  yellow  grass,  and  here  and  there 
groves  of  giant  sunflowers  with  yellow  blooms,  but  no  more 
trees. 

As  the  sun  set,  we  came  on  a  body  of  cavalry  inarching 
slowly  from  the  Plains  toward  the  fort.  Before  them,  at  some 
little  distance,  walked  a  sad-faced  man  on  foot,  in  sober  riding- 
dress,  with  a  repeating  carbine  slung  across  his  back.  It  was 
Sherman  returning  from  his  expedition  to  Santa  Fe. 


CHAPTER  X. 

LETTER  FROM  DENVER. 


Monday,  3d  September. 
My  dear ,  — Here  we  are,  scalps  and  all. 

On  Tuesday  last,  at  sundown,  we  left  Fort  Riley,  and  sup- 
ped at  Junction  City,  the  extreme  point  that  "  civilization  "  has 
reached  upon  the  Plains.  Civilization  means  whisky;  post- 
offices  don't  count. 

It  was  here  that  it  first  dawned  upon  us  that  we  were  be- 
ing charged  500  dollars  to  guard  the  United  States  Calif  orni- 
an  mail,  with  the  compensation  of  the  chance  of  being  our- 
selves able  to  rob  it  with  impunity.  It  is,  at  all  events,  the 
case  that  we,  well-armed  as  the  mail-officers  at  Leavenworth  in- 
sisted on  our  being,  sat  inside  with  forty-two  cwt.  of  mail,  in 
open  bags,  and  over  a  great  portion  of  the  route  had  only  the 
driver  with  us,  without  whose  knowledge  we  could  have  read 


Letter  from  Denver.  87 

all  and  stolen  most  of  the  letters,  and  with  whose  knowledge, 
but  against  whose  will,  we  could  have  carried  off  the  whole, 
leaving  him  gagged,  bound,  and  at  the  mercy  of  the  Indians. 
As  it  was,  a  mail-bag  fell  out  one  day,  without  the  knowledge 
of  either  Dixon  or  the  driver,  who  were  outside,  and  I  had  to 
shout  pretty  freely  before  they  would  pull  up. 

On  Wednesday  we  had  our  last  "  squar'  meal  "  in  the  shape 
of  a  breakfast  at  Fort  Ellsworth,  and  soon  were  out  upon  the 
almost  unknown  Plains.  In  the  morning  we  caught  up  and 
passed  long  wagon-trains,  each  wagon  drawn  by  eight  oxen, 
and  guarded  by  two  drivers  and  one  horseman,  all  armed  with 
breech-loading  rifles  and  revolvers,  or  with  the  new  "  repeat- 
ers," before  which  breech-loaders  and  revolvers  must  alike  go 
down.  All  day  we  kept  a  sharp  lookout  for  a  party  of  seven 
American  officers,  who,  in  defiance  of  the  scout's  advice,  had 
gone  out  from  the  fort  to  hunt  buffalo  upon  the  track. 

About  sundown  we  came  into  the  little  station  of  Lost 
Creek.  The  ranchmen  told  us  that  they  had,  during  the  day, 
been  driven  in  from  their  work  by  a  party  of  Cheyennes,  and 
that  they  had  some  doubts  as  to  the  wisdom  of  the  officers  in 
going  out  to  hunt.     They  had  passed  here  at  midday. 

Just  as  we  were  leaving  the  station,  one  of  the  officers' 
horses  dashed  in  riderless,  and  was  caught;  and  about  two 
miles  from  the  station  we  passed  another  on  its  back,  ripped 
up  either  by  a  knife  or  buffalo-horn.  The  saddle  was  gone, 
but  there  were  no  other  marks  of  a  fight.  We  believe  that 
these  officers  Avere  routed  by  buffalo,  not  Cheyennes,  but  still 
we  should  be  glad  to  hear  of  them. 

The  track  is  marked  in  many  parts  of  the  plains  by  stakes, 
such  as  those  from  which  the  Llano  Estacado  takes  its  name ; 
but  this  evening  we  turned  off  into  devious  lines  by  way  of  pre- 
caution against  ambuscades,  coming  round  through  the  sandy 
beds  of  streams  to  the  ranches  for  the  change  of  mules.  The 
ranchmen  were  always  ready  for  us  ;  for,  while  we  were  still  a 
mile  away,  our  driver  would  put  his  hand  to  his  mouth,  and  give 
a  "  How  !  how  !  how  !  how — w  !"  the  Cheyenne  war-whoop. 

In  the  weird  glare  that  follows  sunset  we  came  upon  a  pile 
of  rocks  admirably  fitted  for  an  ambush.  As  we  neared  them, 
the  driver  said :  "  It's  'bout  an  even  chance  thet  we's  sculp 
ther' !"     We  could  not  avoid  them,  as  there  was  a  gully  that 


88  Greater  Britain. 

could  only  be  crossed  at  this  one  point.  We  dashed  down 
into  the  "  creek  "  and  up  again,  past  the  rocks  :  there  were  no 
Indians,  but  the  driver  was  most  uneasy  till  we  reached  Dig 
Creek. 

Here  they  could  give  us  nothing  whatever  to  eat,  the  In- 
dians having,  on  Tuesday,  robbed  them  of  every  thing  they  had, 
and  ordered  them  to  leave  within  fifteen  days  on  pain  of  death. 

For  250  miles  westward  from  Big  Creek  we  found  that  ev- 
ery station  had  been  warned  (and  most  plundered)  by  bands 
of  Cheyennes,  on  behalf  of  the  forces  of  the  confederation  en- 
camped near  the  creek  itself.  The  warning  was  in  all  cases 
that  of  fire  and  death  at  the  end  of  fifteen  days,  of  which  nine 
days  have  expired.  We  found  the  horse-keepers  of  the  com- 
pany everywhere  leaving  their  stations,  and  were,  in  conse- 
quence, very  nearly  starved,  having  been  unsuccessful  in  our 
shots  from  the  "  coach,"  except,  indeed,  at  the  snakes. 

On  Thursday  we  passed  Big  Timber,  the  only  spot  on  the 
Plains  where  there  are  trees ;  and  there  the  Indians  had  count- 
ed the  trees,  and  solemnly  warned  the  men  against  cutting 
more :  "  Fifty-two  tree.  You  no  cut  more  tree — no  more  cut. 
Grass  !  You  cut  grass;  grass  make  big  fire.  You  good  boy 
■ — you  clear  out.  Fifteen  day,  we  come :  you  no  gone — ugh  !" 
The  "  ugh  "  accompanied  by  an  expressive  pantomime. 

On  Thursday  evening  we  got  a  meal  of  buffalo  and  prairie- 
dog,  the  former  too  strong  for  my  failing  stomach,  the  latter 
wholesome  nourishment,  and  fit  for  kings — as  like  our  rabbit 
in  flavor  as  he  is  in  shape.  This  was  at  the  horse-station  of 
"  The  Monuments,"  a  natural  temple  of  awesome  grandeur,  ris- 
ing from  the  plains  like  a  giant  Stonehenge. 

On  Friday  we  "  breakfasted  "  at  Pond  Creek  Station,  two 
miles  from  Fort  Wallis.  Here  the  people  had  applied  for  a 
guard,  and  had  been  answered,  "  Come  into  the  fort ;  we  can't 
spare  a  man."  So  much  for  the  value  of  the  present  forts  ; 
and  yet  even  these — Wallis  and  Ellsworth — are  200  miles 
apart. 

We  were  joined  at  breakfast  by  Bill  Comstock,  interpreter 
to  the  fort — a  long-haired,  wild-eyed  half-breed — Avho  gave  us, 
in  an  hour's  talk,  the  full  history  of  the  Indian  politics  that 
have  led  to  the  present  Avar. 

The  Indians,  to  the  number  of  20,000,  have  been  in  council 


Letter  from  Denver.  89 

With  the  Washington  Commissioners  all  this  summer  at  Fort 
Laramie;  and,  after  being  clothed, fed,  and  armed,  lately  con- 
cluded a  treaty,  allowing  the  running  on  the  mail-roads.  They 
now  assert  that  this  treaty  was  intended  to  apply  to  the  Platte 
Road  (from  Omaha  and  Atchison,  through  Fort  Kearney)  and 
to  the  Arkansas  Road,  but  not  to  the  Smoky  Hill  Road,  which 
lies  between  the  others,  and  runs  through  the  buffalo  country  ; 
but  their  real  opposition  is  to  the  railroad.  The  Cheyennes 
(pronounced  Shians)  have  got  the  Comanchcs,  Apaches,  and 
Arapahoes  from  the  south,  and  the  Sioux  and  Kiowas  from  the 
north,  to  join  them  in  a  confederation,  under  the  leadership  of 
Spotted  Dog,  the  chief  of  the  Little  Dog  section  of  the  Chey- 
ennes, and  son  of  White  Antelope — killed  at  Sand  Creek  bat- 
tle by  the  Kansas  and  Colorado  Volunteers — who  has  sworn 
to  avenge  his  father. 

Soon  after  leaving  Pond  Creek,  we  sighted  at  a  distance 
three  mounted  "  braves  "  leading  some  horses ;  and  when  we 
reached  the  next  station,  Ave  found  that  they  had  been  there, 
openly  proclaiming  that  their  "mounts"  had  been  stolen  from 
a  team. 

All  this  day  we  sat  Avith  our  revolvers  laid  upon  the  mail- 
bags  in  front  of  us,  and  our  driver  also  had  his  armory  conspic- 
uously displayed,  while  we  swept  the  Plains  with  many  an  anx- 
ious glance.  We  were  on  lofty  rolling  downs,  and  to  the  south 
the  eye  often  ranged  over  much  of  the  130  miles  which  lay 
between  us  and  Texas.  To  the  north  the  view  was  more 
bounded ;  still  our  chief  danger  lay  near  the  boulders  which 
here  and  there  covered  the  Plains. 

All  Thursday  and  Friday  we  never  lost  sight  of  the  buffalo, 
in  herds  of  about  300,  and  the  "  antelope  " — the  prong-horn,  a 
kind  of  gazelle — in  flocks  of  about  six  or  seven.  Prairie-dogs 
were  abundant,  and  wolves  and  black-tail  deer  in  view  every 
hour  or  two. 

The  most  singular  of  all  the  sights  of  the  Plains  is  the  pres- 
ence every  few  yards  of  the  skeletons  of  buffalo  and  of  horse, 
of  mule  and  of  ox ;  the  former  left  by  the  hunters,  who  take 
but  the  skin,  and  the  latter  the  losses  of  the  mails  and  the  wag- 
on-trains, through  sun-stroke  and  thirst.  We  killed  a  horse 
on  the  second  day  of  our  journey. 

When  we  came  upon  oxen  that  had  not  long  been  dead,  we 


90  Greater  Britain.  x 

found  that  the  intense  dryness  of  the  air  had  made  mummies 
of  them ;  there  was  no  stench,  no  putrefaction. 

During  the  day  I  made  some  practice  at  antelope  with  the 
driver's  Ballard ;  but  an  antelope  at  500  yards  is  not  a  good 
target.  The  drivers  shot  repeatedly  at  buffalo  at  twenty 
yards,  but  this  only  to  keep  them  away  from  the  horses;  the 
revolver  balls  did  not  seem  to  go  through  their  hair  and  skin, 
as  they  merely  shambled  on  in  their  usual  happy  sort  of  way 
after  receiving  a  discharge  or  two. 

The  prairie-dogs  sat  barking  in  thousands  on  the  tops  of 
their  mounds,  but  we  were  too  grateful  to  them  for  their  gay- 
ety  to  dream  of  pistol-shots.  They  are  no  "  dogs  "  at  all,. but 
rabbits  that  bark,  with  all  the  cony's  tricks  and  turns,  and  the 
same  odd  way  of  rubbing  their  face  with  their  paws  while 
they  con  you  from  top  to  toe. 

With  avoIvcs,  buffalo,  antelope,  deer,  skunks,  dogs,  plover, 
curlew,  dotterel,  herons,  vultures,  ravens,  snakes,  and  locusts, 
we  never  seemed  to  be  without  a  million  companions  in  our 
loneliness. 

From  Cheyenne  Wells,  where  we  changed  mules  in  the 
afternoon,  we  brought  on  the  ranchman's  wife,  painfully  mak- 
ing room  for  her  at  our  own  expense.  Her  husband  had  been 
warned  by  the  Cheyennes  that  the  place  would  be  destroyed : 
he  meant  to  stay,  but  was  in  fear  for  her.  The  Cheyennes 
had  made  her  work  for  them,  and  our  supper  had  gone  down 
Cheyenne  throats. 

Soon  after  leaving  the  station  we  encountered  one  of  the 
great  "  dirt-storms  "  of  the  Plains.  About  5  r.M.  we  saw  a 
little  white  cloud  growing  into  a  column,  which  in  half  an 
hour  turned  black  as  night,  and  possessed  itself  of  half  the 
skies.  We  then  saw  what  seemed  to  be  a  water-spout ;  and, 
though  no  rain  reached  us,  I  think  it  was  one.  When  the 
storm  burst  on  us,  we  took  it  for  rain ;  and,  halting,  we  drew 
down  our  canvas,  and  held  it  against  the  hurricane.  We  soon 
found  that  our  eyes  and  mouths  were  full  of  dust ;  and  when 
I  put  out  my  hand,  I  felt  that  it  was  dirt,  not  rain,  that  was 
falling.  In  a  few  Minutes  it  was  pitch  dark ;  and  after  the 
fall  had  continued  for  some  time,  there  began  a  series  of  flash- 
es of  blinding  lightning,  in  the  very  centre  and  midst  of  which 
we  seemed  to  be.     Notwithstanding  this,  there  was  no  sound 


Letter  prom  Denver.  91 

of  thunder.  The  "  Norther  "  lasted  some  three  or  four  hours, 
and  when  it  ceased,  it  left  us  total  darkness,  and  a  wind  which 
froze  our  marrow,  as  we  again  started  on  our  way.  When 
Fremont  explored  this  route,  he  reported  that  this  high  ridge 
between  the  Platte  and  Arkansas  was  notorious  among  the 
Indians  for  its  tremendous  dirt-storms.  Sheet-lightning  with- 
out thunder  accompanies  dust-storms  in  all  great  continents  : 
it  is  as  common  in  the  Punjaub  as  in  Australia,  in  South  as  in 
North  America. 

On  Saturday  morning,  at  Lake  Station,  we  got  beyond  the 
Indians,  and  into  a  land  of  plenty,  or,  at  all  events,  a  land  of 
something,  for  we  got  milk  from  the  station  cow,  and  pre- 
served fruits  that  had  come  round  through  Denver  from  Ohio 
and  Kentucky.  Not  even  on  Saturday,  though,  could  we  get 
dinner ;  and  as  I  missed  the  only  antelope  that  came  within 
reach,  our  supper  was  not  much  heavier  than  our  breakfast. 

Rolling  through  the  Arapahoe  country,  where  it  is  pro- 
posed to  make  a  reserve  for  the  Cheyennes,  at  eight  o'clock  in 
the  morning  we  had  caught  sight  of  the  glittering  snows  of 
Pike's  Peak,  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  away,  and  all  the  day 
we  wTere  galloping  toward  it,  through  a  country  swarming 
with  rattlesnakes  and  vultures.  Late  in  the  evening,  when 
we  were  drawing  near  to  the  first  of  the  Coloradan  farms,  we 
came  on  a  white  wolf  unconcernedly  taking  his  evening  prowl 
about  the  stock-yards.  He  sneaked  along  without  taking  any 
notice  of  us,  and  continued  his  thief-like  walk  with  a  bravery 
that  seemed  only  to  show  that  he  had  never  seen  man  before  : 
this  might  well  be  the  case  if  he  came  from  the  south,  near 
the  upper  forks  of  the  Arkansas. 

All  this,  and  the  frequency  of  buffalo,  I  was  unprepared 
for.  I  imagined  that  though  the  Plains  were  uninhabited,  the 
game  had  all  been  killed.  On  the  contrary,  the  "  Smoky  dis- 
trict "  was  never  known  so  thronged  with  buffalo  as  it  is  this 
year.  The  herds  resort  to  it  because  there  they  are  close  to 
the  water  of  the  Platte  River,  and  yet  out  of  the  reach  of  the 
traffic  of  the  Platte  Road.  The  tracks  they  make  in  travelling 
to  and  fro  across  the  Plains  are  visible  for  years  after  they 
have  ceased  to  use  them.  I  have  seen  them  as  broad  and  as 
straight  as  the  finest  of  Roman  roads. 

On  Sunday,  at  two  in  the  morning,  we  dashed  into  Den- 


92  Greater  Britain. 

vet ;  and  as  we  reeled  .and  staggered  from  our  late  prison,  the 
ambulance,  into  the  "  cockroach  corral "  which  does  duty  for 
the  bar-room  of  the  "  Planters'  House,"  we  managed  to  find 
strength  and  words  to  agree  that  we  would  fix  no  time  for 
meeting  the  next  day.  We  expected  to  sleep  for  thirty  hours : 
as  it  was,  we  met  at  breakfast  at  seven  a.m.,  less  than  five 
hours  from  the  time  at  which  we  parted.  It  is  to-day  that 
we  feel  exhausted ;  the  exhilaration  of  the  mountain  air,  and 
the  excitement  of  frequent  visits,  carried  us  through  yester- 
day. Dixon  is  suffering  from  strange  blains  and  boils,  caused 
by  the  unwholesome  food. 

We  have  been  called  upon  here  by  Governor  Gilpin  and 
Governor  Cummings,  the  opposition  governors.  The  former 
is  the  elected  governor  of  the  State  of  Colorado  which  is  to 
be,  and  would  have  been  but  for  the  fact  that  the  President 
put  his  biff  toe  (Western  for  veto)  upon  the  bill;  the  latter, 
the  Washington-sent  governor  of  the  Territory.  Gilpin  is  a 
typical  pioneer  man,  and  the  descendant  of  a  line  of  such. 
He  comes  of  one  of  the  original  Quaker  stocks  of  Maryland, 
and  he  and  his  ancestors  have  ever  been  engaged  in  founding 
States.  He  himself,  after  taking  an  active  share  in  the  foun- 
dation of  Kansas,  commanded  a  regiment  of  cavalry  in  the 
Mexican  War.  After  this,  he  was  at  the  head  of  the  pioneer 
army  which  explored  the  pares  of  the  Cordilleras  and  the  Ter- 
ritory of  Nevada.  He  it  was  who  hit  upon  the  glorious  idea 
of  placing  Colorado  half  upon  each  side  of  the  Sierra  Madre. 
There  never  in  the  history  of  the  world  was  a  grander  idea 
than  this.  Any  ordinary  pioneer  or  politician  would  have 
given  Colorado  the  "  natural "  frontier,  and  have  tried  for  the 
glory  of  the  foundation  of  two  States  instead  of  one.  The 
consequence  would  have  been  the  lasting  disunion  between 
the  Pacific  and  Atlantic  States,  and  a  possible  future  break- 
up of  the  country.  As  it  is,  this  commonwealth,  little  as  it 
at  present  is,  links  sea  to  sea,  and  Liverpool  to  Hong  Kong. 

The  city  swarms  with  Indians  of  the  bands  commanded  by 
the  chiefs  Nevara  and  Colloreyo.  They  are  at  war  with  the 
six  confederate  tribes,  and  with  the  Pawnees — with  all  the 
Plain  Indians,  in  short.  Now,  as  the  Pawnees  are  also  fight- 
ing with  the  six  tribes,  there  is  a  pretty  triangular  war. 
They  came  in  to  buy  arms,  and  fearful  scoundrels  they  look. 


Letter  from  Denver.  93 

Short,  flat-nosed,  long-haired,  painted  in  red  and  blue,  and 
dressed  in  a  gaudy  costume,  half-Spanish,  half -Indian,  which 
makes  their  filthiness  appear  more  filthy  by  contrast,  and  them- 
selves carrying  only  their  Ballard  and  Smith-and-Wesson,  but 
forcing  the  squaws  to  carry  all  their  other  goods,  and  pa- 
pooses in  addition,  they  present  a  spectacle  of  unmixed  ruffian- 
ism which  I  never  expect  to  see  surpassed.  Dixon  and  I,  both 
of  us,  left  London  with  "Lo  !  the  poor  Indian,"  in  all  his  dig- 
nity and  hook-nosedness,  elevated  on  a  pedestal  of  nobility 
in  our  hearts.  Our  views  were  shaken  in  the  East,  but  noth- 
ing revolutionized  them  so  rapidly  as  our  three  days'  risk  of 
scalping  in  the  Plains.  John  Howard  and  Mrs.  Beecher 
Stowe  themselves  would  go  in  for  the  Western  "  disarm  at 
any  price,  and  exterminate  if  necessary  "  policy  if  they  lived 
long  in  Denver.  One  of  the  braves  of  Nevara'a  command 
brought  in  the  scalp  of  a  Cheyenne  chief  taken  by  him  last 
month,  and  to-day  it  hangs  outside  the  door  of  a  pawn-broker's 
shop  for  sale,  fingered  by  every  passer-by. 

Many  of  the  band  were  engaged  in  putting  on  their  paint, 
which  was  bright  vermilion,  with  a  little  indigo  round  the 
eye.  This,  with  the  sort  of  pigtail  which  they  wear,  gives 
them  the  look  of  the  gnomes  in  the  introduction  to  a  London 
pantomime.  One  of  them — Nevara  himself,  I  was  told — wore 
a  sombrero  with  three  scarlet  plumes,  taken  probably  from  a 
Mexican,  a  crimson  jacket,  a  dark-blue  shawl,  worn  round  the 
loins  and  over  the  arm  in  Spanish  dancer  fashion,  and  em- 
broidered moccasins.  His  squaw  was  a  vermilion-faced  bun- 
dle of  rags  not  more  than  four  feet  high,  staggering  under  buf- 
falo hides,  bow  and  arrows,  and  papoose.  They  move  every- 
where on  horseback,  and  in  the  evening  withdraw  in  military 
order,  with  advance  and  rear  guard,  to  a  camp  at  some  dis- 
tance from  the  town. 

I  enclose  some  prairie  flowers,  gathered  in  my  walks  round 
the  city.  Their  names  are  not  suited  to  their  beauty ;  the 
large  white  one  is  "  the  morning  blower,"  the  most  lovely  of 
all,  save  one,  of  the  flowers  of  the  Plains.  It  grows,  with 
many  branches,  to  a  height  of  some  eighteen  inches,  and  bears 
from  thirty  to  fifty  blooms.  The  blossoms  are  open  up  to  a 
little  after  sunrise,  when  they  close,  seldom  to  open  even  after 
sunset.     It  is,  therefore,  peculiarly  the  early  riser's  flower ; 


94  Gbeater  Britain. 

and  if  it  be  true  that  Nature  doesn't  make  things  in  vain,  it 
follows  that  Nature  intended  men — or,  at  all  events,  some  men 
— to  get  up  early,  which  is  a  point  that  I  believe  was  doubt- 
ful hitherto. 

For  the  one  prairie  flower  which  I  think  more  beautiful 
than  the  blower  I  can  not  find  a  name.  It  rises  to  about  six 
inches  above  ground,  and  spreads  in  a  circle  of  a  foot  across. 
Its  leaf  is  thin  and  spare ;  its  flower-bloom  a  white  cup,  about 
two  inches  in  diameter,  and  its  buds  pink  and  pendulent. 

All  our  garden  annuals  are  to  be  found  in  masses  acres  in 
size  upon  the  Plains.  Penstemon,  coreopsis,  persecaria,  yucca, 
dwarf  sumac,  marigold,  and  sunflower,  all  are  flowering  here 
at  once,  till  the  country  is  ablaze  with  gold  and  red.  The 
coreopsis  of  our  gardens  they  call  the  "  rosin-weed,"  and  say 
that  it  forms  excellent  food  for  sheep. 

The  view  of  the  "Cordillera  della  Sierra  Madre,"  the 
Pocky  Mountain  main  chain,  from  the  outskirts  of  Denver,  is 
sublime ;  that  from  the  roof  at  Milan  does  not  approach  it. 
Twelve  miles  from  the  city  the  mountains  rise  abruptly  from 
the  Plains.  Piled  range  above  range,  with  step-like  regulari- 
ty, they  are  topped  by  a  long  white  line,  sharply  relieved 
against  the  indigo  color  of  the  sky.  Two  hundred  and  fifty 
miles  of  the  mother  Sierra  arc  in  sight  from  our  veranda ;  to 
the  south,  Pike's  Peak  and  Spanish  Peak;  Long's  Peak  to 
the  north — Mount  Lincoln  towering  above  all.  The  views  are 
limited  only  by  the  curvature  of  the  earth,  such  is  the  marvel- 
lous purity  of  the  Coloradan  air,  the  effect  at  once  of  the  dis- 
tance from  the  sea,  and  of  the  bed  of  limestone  which  under- 
lies the  Plains. 

The  site  of  Denver  is  heaven-blessed  in  climate  as  well  as 
loveliness.  The  sky  is  brilliantly  blue,  and  cloudless  from 
dawn  till  noon.  In  the  midday  heats  cloud-making  in  the 
Sierra  begins,  and  by  sunset  the  snowy  chain  is  multiplied  a 
hundred  times  in  curves  of  white  and  purple  cumuli,  while 
thunder  rolls  heavily  along  the  range.  "  This  is  a  great  coun- 
try, sir,"  said  a  Coloradan  to  me  to-day.  "  We  make  clouds 
for  the  whole  universe."  At  dark  there  is  dust  or  thunder 
storm  at  the  mountain-foot,  and  then  the  cold  and  brilliant 
niorht.     Summer  and  winter,  it  is  the  same. 


Red  India.  95 


CHAPTER  XI. 

RED     INDIA. 

"  These  Red  Indians  are  not  red,"  was  our  first  cry,  when 
we  saw  the  Utes  in  the  streets  of  Denver.  They  had  come 
into  town  to  be  painted  as  English  ladies  go  to  London  to 
shop ;  and  Ave  saw  them  engaged  within  a  short  time  after 
their  coming  in  daubing  their  cheeks  with  vermilion  and  blue, 
and  referring  to  glasses  which  the  squaws  admiringly  held. 
Still,  when  we  met  them  with  peaceful,  paintless  cheeks,  we 
had  seen  that  their  color  was  brown,  copper,  dirt,  any  thing 
you  please  except  red. 

The  Hurons,  with  whom  I  had  staid  at  Indian  Lorette, 
were  French  in  training  if  not  in  blood ;  the  Pottawatomies 
of  St.  Mary's  Mission,  the  Delawares  of  Leavenworth,  are 
tame,  not  wild :  it  is  true  that  they  can  hardly  be  called  red. 
But  still  I  had  expected  to  have  found  these  wild  prairie  and 
mountain  Indians  of  the  color  from  which  they  take  their 
name.  Save  for  paint,  I  found  them  of  a  color  wholly  differ- 
ent from  that  which  we  call  red. 

Low  in  stature,  yellow-skinned,  small-eyed,  and  Tartar- 
faced,  the  Indians  of  the  Plains  are  a  distinct  people  from  the 
tall,  hook-nosed  warriors  of  the  Eastern  States.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  set  eyes  on  their  women  without  being  reminded  of 
the  dwarf  skeletons  found  in  the  mounds  of  Missouri  and 
Iowa ;  but,  men  or  women,  tho  LTtes  bear  no  resemblance  to 
the  bright-eyed,  graceful  people  with  whom  Penn  traded  and 
Standish  fought.  They  are  not  less  inferior  in  mind  than  in 
body.  It  was  no  Shoshone,  no  Ute,  no  Cheyenne  who  called 
the  rainbow  the  "  heaven  of  flowers,"  the  moon  the  "  night 
queen,"  or  the  stars  "  God's  eyes."  The  Plain  tribes  are  as 
deficient,  too,  in  heroes  as  in  poetry :  they  have  never  even 
produced  a  general,  and  White  Antelope  is  their  nearest  ap- 
proach to  a  Tecumseh.  Their  mode  of  life,  the  natural  feat- 
\ires  of  the  country  in  which  they  dwell,  have  nothing  in 
them  to  suggest  a  reason  for  their  debased  condition.  The 
reason  must  lie  in  the  blood,  the  race. 


96  Greater  Britain. 

All  who  have  seen  both  the  Indians  and  the  Polynesians  at 
home  must  have  been  struck  with  innumerable  resemblances. 
The  Maori  and  Red  Indian  wakes  for  the  dead  are  identical; 
the  California!!  Indians  wear  the  Maori  mat ;  the  "  medicine  " 
of  the  Mandan  is  but  the  "  tapu "  of  Polynesia ;  the  New 
Zealand  dance-song,  the  Maori  tribal  sceptre,  were  found 
alike  by  Strachey  in  Virginia,  and  Drake  in  California ;  the 
canoes  of  the  "West  Indies  are  the  same  as  those  of  Polynesia. 
Hundreds  of  arguments,  best  touched  from  the  farther  side 
of  the  Pacific,  concur  to  prove  the  Indians  a  Polynesian  race. 
The  canoes  that  brought  to  Easter  Island  the  people  who 
built  their  mounds  and  rock  temples  there,  may  as  easily  have 
been  carried  on  by  the  Chilian  breeze  and  current  to  the 
!  <outh  American  shore.  The  wave  from  Malaya  would  have 
spent  itself  upon  the  Northern  plains.  The  Utes  would  seem 
to  be  Kamtchatkians,  or  men  of  the  Amoor,  who,  fighting 
their  way  round  by  Behring  Straits,  and  then  down  south, 
drove  a  wedge  between  the  Polynesians  of  Appalachia  and 
California.  No  theory  but  this  will  account  for  the  sharp 
contrast  between  the  civilization  of  ancient  Peru  and  Mexico, 
and  the  degradation  in  which  the  Utes  have  lived  from  the 
earliest  recorded  times.  Mounds,  rock  temples,  worship,  all 
are  alike  unknown  to  the  Indians  of  the  Plains  ;  to  the  Poly- 
nesian Indians,  these  were  things  that  had  come  down  to  them 
from  all  time. 

Curious  as  is  the  question  of  the  descent  of  the  American 
tribes,  it  has  no  bearing  on  the  future  of  the  country,  unless 
indeed,  in  the  eyes  of  those  who  assert  that  Datawares  and 
Utes,  Hurons  and  Pawnees,  are  all  one  race,  with  features 
modified  by  soil  and  climate.  If  this  were  so,  the  handsome, 
rollicking,  frank-faced  Coloradan  "  boys  "  would  have  to  look 
forward  to  the  time  when  their  sons'  sons  should  be  as  like 
the  Utes  as  many  New  Englanders  of  to-day  are  like  the  In- 
dians they  expelled — that,  as  the  New  Englanders  are  tall, 
taciturn,  and  hatchet-faced,  the  Coloradans  of  the  next  age 
should  be  flat-faced  warriors  five  feet  high.  Confidence  in 
the  future  of  America  must  be  founded  on  a  belief  in  the  in- 
destructible vitality  of  race. 

Kamtchatkians  or  Polynesians,  Malays  or  sons  of  the  prai- 
ries on  which  they  dwell,  the  lied  Indians  have  no  future.     In 


Red  India.  97 

twenty  years  there  will  scarcely  be  one  of  pure  blood  alive 
within  the  United  States. 

In  La  Plata  the  Indians  from  the  inland  forests  gradually 
mingle  with  the  whiter  inhabitants  of  the  coast,  and  become 
indistinguishable  from  the  remainder  of  the  population.  In 
Canada  and  Tahiti  the  French  intermingled  with  the  native 
race:  the  Hurons  are  French  in  every  thing  but  name.  In 
Kansas,  in  Colorado,  in  New  Mexico,  miscegenation  will  never 
be  brought  about.  The  pride  of  race,  strong  in  the  English 
eveiy where,  in  America  and  Australia  is  an  absolute  bar  to 
intermarriage,  and  even  to  lasting  connections  with  the  aborig- 
ines. What  has  happened  in  Tasmania  and  Victoria,  is  hap- 
pening in  New  Zealand  and  on  the  Plains.  When  you  ask  a 
Western  man  his  views  on  the  Indian  question,  he  says; 
"  Well,  sir,  we  can  destroy  them  by  the  laws  of  war,  or  thin 
'em  out  by  whisky ;  but  the  thinning  process  is  plaguy  slow." 

There  are  a  good  many  Southerners  out  upon  the  Plains. 
One  of  them,  describing  to  me  how  in  Florida  they  had 
hunted  down  the  Seminoles  with  blood-hounds,  added,  "And 
sarved  the  pesky  sarpints  right,  sah  !"  South-western  volun- 
teers, campaigning  against  the  Indians,  have  been  known  to 
hang  up  in  their  tents  the  scalps  of  the  slain,  as  we  English 
used  to  nail  up  the  skins  of  the  Danes. 

There  is  in  these  matters  less  hypocrisy  among  the  Ameri- 
cans than  with  ourselves.  In  1840  the  British  Government 
assumed  the  sovereignty  of  New  Zealand  in  a  proclamation 
which  set  forth  with  great  precision  that  it  did  so  for  the  sole 
purpose  of  protecting  the  aborigines  in  the  possession  of  their 
lands.  The  Maories  numbered  200,000  then ;  they  number 
20,000  now. 

Among  the  Western  men  there  is  no  difference  of  opinion 
on  the  Indian  question.  Rifle  and  revolver  are  their  only 
policy.  The  New  Englanders,  Avho  are  all  for  Christianity 
and  kindliness  in  their  dealings  with  the  red  men,  are  not  simi- 
larly united  in  one  cry.  Those  who  are  ignorant  of  the  nature 
of  the  Indian  call  out  for  agricultural  employment  for  the 
braves ;  those  who  know  nothing  of  the  Indian's  life  demand 
that  "  reserves"  be  set  aside  for  him,  forgetting  that  no  "re- 
serves" can  be  large  enough  to  hold  the  buffalo,  and  that  with- 
out the  buffalo  the  red  men  must  plow  or  starve. 

E 


98  Greater  Britain. 

Indian  civilization  through  the  means  of  agriculture  is  all 
but  a  total  failure.  The  Shawnees  are  thriving  near  Kansas 
City,  the  Pott  anatomies  living  at  St.  Mary's  Mission,  the  Dela- 
ware's existing  at  Leavenworth ;  but  in  all  these  cases  there  is 
a  large  infusion  of  white  blood.  The  Canadian  Hurons  arc 
completely  civilized;  but  then  they  are  completely  French. 
If  you  succeed  with  an  Indian  to  all  appearance,  he  will  sud- 
denly return  to  his  untamed  state.  An  Indian  girl,  one  of  the 
most  orderly  of  the  pupils  at  a  ladies'  school,  has  been  known, 
on  feeling  herself  aggrieved,  to  withdraw  to  her  room,  let 
down  her  back  hair,  paint  her  face,  and  howl.  The  same  ten- 
dency showed  itself  in  the  case  of  the  Delaware  chief  who 
built  himself  a  white  man's  house  and  lived  in  it  thirty  years, 
but  then  suddenly  set  up  his  old  wigwam  in  the  dining-room  in 
disgust.  Another  bad  case  is  that  of  the  Pawnee  who  visit- 
ed Buchanan,  and  behaved  so  well  that  when  a  young  En- 
glishman, who  came  out  soon  after,  told  the  President  that 
he  was  going  West,  he  gave  him  a  letter  to  the  chief,  then 
with  his  tribe  in  Northern  Kansas.  The  Pawnee  read  the 
note,  offered  a  pipe,  gravely  protested  eternal  friendship,  slept 
upon  it,  and  next  morning  scalped  his  visitor  with  his  own 
hand. 

The  English  everywhere  attempt  to  introduce  civilization, 
or  modify  that  which  exists,  in  a  rough-and-ready  manner 
which  invariably  ends  in  failure,  or  in  the  destruction  of  the 
native  race.  A  hundred  years  of  absolute  rule,  mostly  peace- 
able, have  not,  under  every  advantage,  seen  the  success  of  our 
repeated  attempts  to  establish  trial  by  jury  in  Bengnl.  For 
twenty  years  the  Maories  have  mixed  with  the  New  Zealand 
colonists  on  nearly  equal  terms,  have  almost  universally  pro- 
fessed themselves  Christians,  have  attended  English  schools, 
and  learned  to  speak  the  English  language,  to  read  and  write 
their  own ;  in  spite  of  all  this,  a  few  weeks  of  fanatic  outburst 
were  enough  to  reduce  almost  the  whole  race  to  a  condition 
of  degraded  savagery.  The  Indians  of  America  have  within 
the  few  last  years  been  caught  and  caged,  given  acres  where 
they  once  had  leagues,  and  told  to  plow  where  once  they  hunt- 
ed. A  pastoral  race,  with  no  conception  of  property  in  land, 
they  have  been  manufactured  into  freeholders  and  tenant 
farmers;  Western  Ishmaelites,  sprung  of  a  race  which  has 


Eed  India.  09 

wandered  since  its  legendary  life  begins,  they  have  been  sub- 
jected to  homestead  laws  and  title  registration.  If  our  ex- 
periments in  New  Zealand,  in  India,  on  the  African  coast  have 
failed,  cautious  and  costly  as  they  were,  there  can  be  no  great 
wonder  in  the  unsuccess  that  has  attended  the  hurried  Ameri- 
can experiments.  It  is  not  for  us,  who  have  the  past  of  Tas- 
mania and  the  present  of  Queensland  to  account  for,  to  do 
more  than  record  the  fact  that  the  Americans  are  not  more 
successful  with  the  red  men  of  Kansas  than  we  with  the  black 
men  of  Australia. 

The  Bosjesman  is  not  a  more  unpromising  subject  for  civ- 
ilization than  the  red  man ;  the  Ute  is  not  even  gifted  with  the 
birthright  of  most  savages,  the  mimetic  power.  The  black 
man  in  his  dress,  his  farming,  his  religion,  his  family  life,  is 
always  trying  to  imitate  the  white.  In  the  Indian  there  is 
none  of  this :  his  ancestors  roamed  over  the  plains — he  will 
roam ;  his  ancestors  hunted — why  should  not  he  hunt  ?  The 
American  savage,  like  his  Asiatic  cousins,  is  conservative ;  the 
African  changeable,  and  strong  in  imitative  faculties  of  the 
mind.  Just  as  the  Indian  is  less  versatile  than  the  negro,  so, 
if  it  were  possible  gradually  to  change  his  mode  of  life,  slowly 
to  bring  him  to  the  agricultural  state,  he  would  probably  be- 
come a  skillful  and  laborious  cultivator,  and  worthy  inhabit- 
ant of  the  Western  soil ;  as  it  is,  he  is  exterminated  before  lie 
has  time  to  learn.  "  Sculp  'em  fust,  and  then  talk  to  'em,"  the 
Coloradans  say. 

Peace  commissioners  are  yearly  sent  from  Washington  to 
treat  with  hostile  tribes  upon  the  Plains.  The  Indians  inva- 
riably continue  to  fight  and  rob  till  winter  is  at  hand;  but 
when  the  snoAVS  appear,  they  send  in  runners  to  announce  that 
they  are  prepared  to  make  submission.  The  commissioners 
appoint  a  place,  and  the  tribe,  their  relatives,  allies,  and  friends 
come  down  thousands  strong,  and  enter  upon  debates  which 
are  purposely  prolonged  till  spring.  All  this  time  the  Indians 
are  kept  in  food  and  drink;  whisky,  even,  is  illegally  provided 
them,  with  the  cognisance  of  the  authorities,  under  the  name 
of  "  hatchets."  Blankets  and,  it  is  said,  powder  and  revolvers, 
are  supplied  to  them  as  necessary  to  their  existence  on  the 
Plains  ;  but  when  the  first  of  the  spring  flowers  begin  to  peep 
up  through  the  snow  on  the  prairies,  they  take  their  leavcj  and 


100  Greater  Britain-. 

in  a  few  weeks  are  out  again  upon  the  war-path,  plundering 
and  scalping. 

Judging  from  English  experience  in  the  north,  and  Spanish 
in  Mexico  and  South  America,  it  would  seem  as  though  the 
white  man  and  the  red  can  not  exist  on  the  same  soil.  Step 
by  step,  the  English  have  driven  back  the  braves,  till  New  En- 
glanders  now  remember  that  there  were  Indians  once  in  Mas- 
sachusetts, as  Ave  remember  that  once  there  were  bears  in 
Hampshire.  King  Philip's  defeat  by  the  Connecticut  Volun- 
teers seems  to  form  part  of  the  earlier  legendary  history  of 
our  race ;  yet  there  is  still  standing,  and  in  good  repair,  in 
Dorchester,  a  suburb  of  Boston,  a  frame-house  which  in  its 
time  has  been  successfully  defended  against  Red  Indians.  On 
the  other  hand,  step  by  step,  since  the  days  of  Cortez,  the  In- 
dians and  half-bloods  have  driven  out  the  Spaniards  from  Mexi- 
co and  South  America.  White  men,  Spaniards,  received  Maxi- 
milian at  Vera  Cruz,  but  he  was  shot  by  full-blood  Indians  at 
Queretaro. 

If  any  attempt  is  to  be  made  to  save  the  Indians  that  re- 
main, it  must  be  worked  out  in  the  Eastern  States.  Hitherto 
the  whites  have  but  pushed  back  the  Indians  westward :  if 
they  would  rescue  the  remnant  from  starvation,  they  must 
bring  them  East,  away  from  Western  men,  and  Western  hunt- 
ing-grounds, and  let  them  intermingle  with  the  whites,  living, 
farming  along  with  them,  intermarrying  if  possible.  The 
hunting  Indian  is  too  costly  a  "being  for  our  age ;  but  we  arc 
bound  to  remember  that  ours  is  the  blame  of  having  failed  to 
teach  him  to  be  something  better. 

After  all,  if  the  Indian  is  mentally,  morally,  and  physically 
inferior  to  the  white  man,  it  is  in  every  way  for  the  advan- 
tage of  the  world  that  the  next  generation  that  inhabits  Colo- 
rado should  consist  of  whites  instead  of  reds.  That  this  result 
should  not  be  brought  about  by  cruelty  or  fraud  upon  the  now- 
existing  Indians,  is  all  that  we  need  require.  The  gradual  ex- 
tinction of  the  inferior  races  is  not  only  a  law  of  nature,  but  a 
blessing  to  mankind. 

The  Indian  question  is  not  likely  to  be  one  much  longer : 
before  I  reached  England  again,  I  learned  that  the  Coloradan 
capital  offered  "twenty  dollars  apiece  for  the  Indian  scalps 
with  ears  on.1' 


Colorado.  101 


CHAPTER  XII. 

COLORADO. 

"VViiex  you  have  once  set  eyes  upon  the  never-ending  sweep 
of  the  Great  Plains,  you  no  longer  wonder  that  America  re- 
jects Malthusianism.  As  Strachey  says  of  Virginia,  "  Here  is 
ground  enough  to  satisfy  the  most  courteous  and  wide  affec- 
tion." The  freedom  of  these  grand  countries  was  worth  the 
tremendous  conflict  in  which  it  was,  in  reality,  the  foremost 
question ;  their  future  is  of  enormous  moment  to  America. 

Travellers  soon  learn,  when  making  estimates  of  a  country's 
value,  to  despise  no  feature  of  the  landscape;  that  of  the 
Plains  is  full  of  life,  full  of  charm — lonely,  indeed,  but  never 
wearisome.  Now  great  rolling  uplands  of  enormous  sweep, 
now  boundless  grassy  plains,  there  is  all  the  grandeur  of 
monotony,  and  yet  continual  change.  Sometimes  the  grand 
distances  are  broken  by  blue  buttes  or  rugged  bluffs.  Over  all 
there  is  a  sparkling  atmosphere  and  never-failing  breeze ;  the 
air  is  bracing  even  when  most  hot ;  the  sky  is  cloudless,  and 
no  rain  falls.  A  solitude  which  no  words  can  paint,  the  bound- 
less prairie  swell,  conveys  an  idea  of  vastness  which  is  the 
overpowering  feature  of  the  Plains. 

Maps  do  not  remove  the  impression  produced  by  views. 
The  Arkansas  River,  which  is  born  and  dies  within  the  limit 
of  the  Plains,  is  two  thousand  miles  in  length,  and  is  naviga- 
ble for  eight  hundred  miles.  The  Platte  and  Yellowstone  are 
each  of  them  as  long.  Into  the  Plains  and  Plateau  you  could 
put  all  India  twice.  The  impression  is  not  merely  one  of 
size.  There  is  perfect  beauty,  wondrous  fertility,  in  the  lonely 
steppe ;  no  patriotism,  no  love  of  home,  can  prevent  the  trav- 
eller wishing  here  to  end  his  days. 

To  those  who  love  the  sea,  there  is  here  a  double  charm. 
Not  only  is  the  roll  of  the  prairie  as  grand  as  that  of  the 
Atlantic,  but  the  crispness  of  the  wind,  the  absence  of  trees, 
the  multitude  of  tiny  blooms  upon  the  sod,  all  conspire  to  give 
a  feeling  of  nearness  to  the  ocean,  the  effect  of  which  is  we  are 


102  Greater  Britain. 

always  expecting  to  hail  it  from  off  the  top  of  the  next  hil- 
lock. 

The  resemblance  to  the  Tartar  plains  has  been  remarked 
by  Coloradan  writers ;  it  may  be  traced  much  farther  than 
they  have  carried  it.  Not  only  are  the  earth,  air,  and  water 
much  alike,  but  in  Colorado,  as  in  Bokhara,  there  are  oil-wells 
and  mud  volcanoes.  The  color  of  the  landscape  is,  in  summer, 
green  and  flowers ;  in  fall-time,  yellow  and  flowers,  but  flowers 
ever. 

The  eastern  and  western  portions  of  the  Plains  are  not 
alike.  In  Kansas  the  grass  is  tall  and  rank ;  the  ravines  are 
filled  with  cottonwood,  hickory,  and  black  walnut ;  here  and 
there  are  square  miles  of  sunflowers  from  seven  to  nine  feet 
high.  As  we  came  west,  we  found  that  the  sunflowers  dwin- 
dled, and  at  Denver  they  are  only  from  three  to  nine  inches 
in  height,  the  oddest  little  plants  in  nature,  but  thorough  sun- 
flowers, for  all  their  smallness.  We  found  the  buffalo  in  the 
eastern  plains  in  the  long  bunch-grass,  but  in  the  winter  they 
work  to  the  west  in  search  of  the  sweet,  juicy  "blue  grass," 
which  they  rub  out  from  under  the  snow  in  the  Coloradan 
plains.  This  grass  is  so  short  that,  as  the  story  goes,  you 
must  lather  it  before  you  can  mow  it.  The  "  blue  grass  "  has 
high  vitality :  if  a  wagon-train  is  camped  for  a  single  night 
among  the  sunflowers  or  tall  weeds,  this  crisp  turf  at  once 
springs  up,  and  holds  the  ground  forever. 

The  most  astounding  feature  of  these  plains  is  their  capac- 
ity to  receive  millions,  and,  swallowing  them  up,  to  wait  open- 
mouthed  for  more.  Vast  and  silent,  fertile,  yet  waste,  field- 
like, yet  untilled,  they  have  room  for  the  Huns,  the  Goths,  the 
Vandals,  for  all  the  teeming  multitudes  that  have  poured  and 
can  pour  from  the  plains  of  Asia  and  of  Central  Europe. 
Twice  as  large  as  Hindostan,  more  temperate,  more  habitable, 
nature  has  been  placed  here  hedgeless,  gateless,  free  to  all — a 
green  field  for  the  support  of  half  the  human  race,  unclaimed, 
untouched,  awaiting  smiling,  hands  and  plow. 

There  are  two  curses  upon  this  land.  Here,  as  in  India, 
the  rivers  depend  on  the  melting  of  distant  snows  for  their 
supplies,  and  in  the  hot  weather  are  represented  by  beds  of 
parched  white  sand.  So  hot  and  dry  is  a  great  portion  of  the 
land  that  crops  require  irrigation.     Water  for  drinking  pur- 


Colorado.  103 

poses  is  scarce ;  artesian  bores  succeed,  but  they  are  somewhat 
costly  for  the  Coloradan  purse,  and  the  supply  from  common 
wells  is  brackish.  This,  perhaps,  may  in  part  account  for  the 
Western  mode  of  "  prospecting  "  after  water,  under  which  it 
is  agreed  that  if  none  be  found  at  ten  feet,  a  trial  shall  be 
made  at  a  fresh  spot.  The  thriftless  ranchman  had  sooner 
find  bad  water  at  nine  feet  than  good  at  eleven. 

Irrigation  by  means  of  dams  and  reservoirs,  such  as  those 
we  are  building  in  Victoria,  is  but  a  question  of  cost  and 
time.  The  never-failing  breezes  of  the  Plains  may  be  utilized 
for  water-raising,  and  with  water  all  is  possible.  Even  in  the 
mountain  plateau,  overspread  as  it  is  with  soda,  it  has  been 
found,  as  it  has  been  by  French  farmers  in  Algeria,  that,  under 
irrigation,  the  more  alkali  the  better  corn-crop. 

When  fires  are  held  in  check  by  special  enactments,  such 
as  those  which  have  been  passed  in  Victoria  and  South  Aus- 
tralia, and  the  waters  of  the  winter  streams  retained  for  sum- 
mer use  by  tanks  and  dams  ;  when  artesian  wells  are  frequent 
and  irrigation  general,  belts  of  timber  will  become  possible 
upon  the  Plains.  Once  planted,  these  will  in  their  turn  miti- 
gate the  extremes  of  climate,  and  keep  alike  in  check  the 
forces  of  evaporation,  sun,  and  wind.  Cultivation  itself  brings 
rain,  and  steam  will  soon  be  available  for  pumping  water  out 
of  wells,  for  there  is  a  great  natural  store  of  brown  coal  and 
of  oil-bearing  shale  near  Denver,  so  that  all  would  be  well  were 
it  not  for  the  locusts — the  scourge  of  the  Plains — the  second 
curse.  The  coming  of  the  chirping  hordes  is  a  real  calamity 
in  these  far- western  countries.  Their  departure,  whenever  it 
occurs,  is  officially  announced  by  the  governor  of  the  State. 

I  have  seen  a  field  of  Indian  corn  stripped  bare  of  every 
leaf  and  cob  by  the  crickets  ;  but  the  owner  told  me  that  he 
found  consolation  in  the  fact  that  they  ate  up  the  weeds  as 
well.  For  the  locusts  there  is  no  cure.  The  plovers  may  eat 
a  few  billions,  but,  as  a  rule,  Coloradans  must  learn  to  expect 
that  the  locusts  will  increase  with  the  increase  of  the  crops  on 
which  they  feed.  The  more  corn,  the  more  locusts — the  more 
plovers,  perhaps ;  a  clear  gain  to  the  locusts  and  plovers,  but 
a  dead  loss  to  the  farmers  and  ranchmen. 

The  Coloradan  "  boys "  are  a  handsome,  intelligent  race. 
The  mixture  of  Celtic  and  Saxon  blood  has  here  produced  a  gen- 


104  Greater  Britain. 

erous  and  noble  manhood ;  and  the  freedom  from  wood,  and  con- 
sequent exposure  to  wind  and  rain,  has  exterminated  ague, 
and  driven  away  the  hatchet-face  ;  but  for  all  this,  the  Colora- 
dans  may  have  to  succumb  to  the  locusts.  At  present  they  af- 
fect to  despise  them.  "  How  may  you  get  on  in  Colorado  ?" 
said  a  Missourian  one  day  to  a  "  boy  "  that  was  up  at  St.  Louis. 
"  Purty  well,  guess,  if  it  warn't  for  the  insects."  "  What  in- 
sects ?  Crickets?"  "Crickets!  Wall,  guess  not  —  jess  in- 
sects like  :  rattlesnakes,  panther,  bar,  catamount,  and  sichlike." 

"  The  march  of  empire  stopped  by  a  grasshopper  "  would 
be  a  good  heading  for  a  Denver  paper,  but  would  not  repre- 
sent a  fact.  The  locusts  may  alter  the  step,  but  not  cause  a 
halt.  If  corn  is  impossible,  cattle  are  not ;  already  thousands 
are  pastured  round  Denver  on  the  natural  grass.  For  horses, 
for  merino  sheep,  these  rolling  table-lands  are  peculiarly  adapt- 
ed. The  New  Zealand  paddock  system  may  be  applied  to  the 
whole  of  this  vast  region — Dutch  clover,  French  lucern,  could 
replace  the  Indian  grasses,  and  four  sheep  to  the  acre  would 
seem  no  extravagant  estimate  of  the  carrying  capability  of  the 
lands.  The  world  must  come  here  for  its  tallow,  its  wool,  its 
hides,  its  food. 

In  this  seemingly  happy  conclusion  there  lurk.^  a  danger. 
Flocks  and  herds  are  the  main  props  of  great  farming,  the 
natural  supporters  of  an  aristocracy.  Cattle-breeding  is  incon- 
sistent, if  not  with  republicanism,  at  least  with  pure  democra- 
cy. There  are  dangerous  classes  of  two  kinds — those  who 
have  too  many  acres,  as  well  as  those  who  have  too  few.  The 
danger  at  least  is  real.  Nothing  short  of  violence  or  special 
legislation  can  prevent  the  Plains  from  continuing  to  be  for- 
ever that  which  under  nature's  farming  they  have  ever  been — 
the  feeding-ground  for  mighty  flocks,  the  cattle-pasture  of  the 
world. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

ROCKY     MOUNTAINS 


"  What  will  I  do  for  you  if  you  stop  here  among  us  ? 
Why,  I'll  name  that  peak  after  you  in  the  next  survey,"  said 
Governor  Gilpin,  pointing  to  a  snowy  mountain  towering  to 


Eocky  Mountains.  105 

its  15,000  feet  in  the  direction  of  Mount  Lincoln.  I  was  not 
to  be  tempted,  however ;  and  as  for  Dixon,  there  is  already  a 
county  named  after  him  in  Nebraska :  so  off  we  went  along 
the  foot  of  the  hills  on  our  road  to  the  Great  Salt  Lake,  fol- 
lowing the  "  Cherokee  Trail." 

Striking  north  from  Denver  by  Vasquez  Fork  and  Cache 
la  Poudre — called  "  Cash  le  Powder,"  just  as  Mount  Royal  has 
become  Montreal,  and  Sault  de  St.  Marie,  Soo — we  entered  the 
Black  Mountains,  or  Eastern  Foot-hills,  at  Beaver  Creek.  On 
the  second  day,  at  two  in  the  afternoon,  we  reached  Virginia 
Dale  for  breakfast  without  adventure,  unless  it  were  the  shoot- 
ing of  a  monster  rattlesnake  that  lay  "  coiled  in  our  path  upon 
the  mountain-side."  Had  we  been  but  a  few  minutes  later, 
we  should  have  made  it  a  halt  for  "  supper  "  instead  of  break- 
fast, as  the  drivers  had  but  these  two  names  for  our  daily 
meals  at  whatever  hour  they  took  place.  Our  "  breakfasts  " 
varied  from  3.30  a.m.  to  2  p.m.  ;  our  suppers,  from  3  r.M.  to 

2  A.M. 

Here  we  found  the  weird  red  rocks  that  give  to  the  river 
and  the  territory  their  name  of  Colorado,  and  came  upon  the 
mountain  plateau  at  the  spot  where  last  year  the  Utes  scalped 
seven  men  only  three  hours  after  Speaker  Colfax  and  a  Con- 
gressional party  had  passed  with  their  escort. 

While  trundling  over  the  sandy  wastes  of  Laramie  Plains, 
we  sighted  the  Wind  River  chain,  drawn  by  Bierstadt  in  his 
great  picture  of  the  "  Rocky  Mountains."  The  painter  has 
caught  the  forms,  but  missed  the  atmosphere  of  the  range:  the 
clouds  and  mists  are  those  of  Maine  and  Massachusetts  ;  there 
is  color  more  vivid,  darkness  more  lurid,  in  the  storms  of  Col- 
orado. 

This  was  our  first  sight  of  the  main  range  since  we  entered 
the  Black  Hills,  although  we  passed  through  the  gorges  at  the 
very  foot  of  Long's  Peak.  It  was  not  till  Ave  had  reached  the 
rolling  hills  of  "  Meridian  Bow  " — a  hundred  miles  beyond  the 
peak — that  we  once  more  caught  sight  of  it  shining  in  the  rear. 

In  the  night  between  the  second  and  third  days  the  frost 
was  so  bitter,  at  the  great  altitude  to  which  Ave  had  attained, 
that  Ave  resorted  to  every  expedient  to  keep  out  the  cold. 
While  I  Avas  trying  to  peg  doAvn  one  of  the  leathern  flaps 
of  our  ambulance  with  the  pencil  from  my  note-book,  my  eye 

E  E 


106  Greater  Britain. 

caught  the  moonlight  on  the  ground,  and  I  drew  back  saying, 
"We  are  on  the  snow."  The  next  time  we  halted  I  found 
that  what  I  had  seen  was  an  impalpable  white  dust,  the  much- 
dreaded  alkali. 

In  the  morning  of  the  third  day  we  found  ourselves  in  a 
country  of  dazzling  white,  dotted  with  here  and  there  a  tuft 
of  sage-brush — an  artemisia  akin  to  that  of  the  Algerian  high- 
lands. At  last  we  were  in  the  "  American  Desert " — the  "  Ma u- 
vaises  terres" 

Once  only  did  we  escape  for  a  time  from  alkali  and  sage  to 
sweet  waters  and  sweet  grass.  Near  Bridger's  Pass  and  the 
"  divide  "  between  Atlantic  and  Pacific  floods,  we  came  on  a 
long  valley  swept  by  chilly  breezes,  and  almost  unfit  for  human 
habitation,  from  the  rarefaction  of  the  air,  but  blessed  with 
pasture-ground  on  which  domesticated  herds  of  Himalayan 
yak  should  one  day  feed.  Settlers  in  Utah  will  find  out  that 
this  animal,  which  would  flourish  here  at  altitudes  of  from 
4000  to  14,000  feet,  and  which  bears  the  most  useful  of  all  furs, 
requires  less  herbage  in  proportion  to  its  weight  and  size  than 
almost  any  animal  we  know. 

This  Bridger's  Pass  route  is  that  by  which  the  telegraph 
line  runs,  and  I  was  told  by  the  drivers  strange  stories  of  the 
Indians  and  their  views  on  this  great  Medicine.  They  never 
destroy  out  of  mere  wantonness,  but  have  been  known  to  cut 
the  wire  and  then  lie  in  ambush  in  the  neighborhood,  in  the 
expectation  that  repairing  parties  would  arrive  and  fall  an  easy 
prey.  Having  come  one  morning  upon  three  armed  overland- 
ers  lying  fast  asleep,  while  a  fourth  kept  guard,  by  afire  which 
coincided  with  a  gap  in  the  posts,  but  which  was  far  from 
any  timber  or  even  scrub,  I  have  my  doubts  as  to  whether 
"  white  Indians  "  have  not  much  to  do  with  the  destruction  of 
the  line. 

From  one  of  the  uplands  of  the  artemisia  barrens  we  sight- 
ed at  once  Fremont's  Peak  on  the  north,  and  another  great 
snow-dome  upon  the  south.  The  unknown  mountain  was  both 
the  more  distant  and  the  loftier  of  the  two,  yet  the  maps  mark 
no  chain  within  eyeshot  to  the  southward.  The  country  on 
either  side  of  this  well-worn  track  is  still  as  little  known 
as  when  Captain  Stansbury  explored  it  in  1850;  and  when 
wo  crossed  the  Green  Hiver,  as  the  Upper  Colorado  is  called, 


Rocky  Mountains.  107 

it  was  strange  to  remember  that  the  stream  is  here  lost  in  a 
thousand  miles  of  undiscovered  wilds,  to  be  found  again  flow- 
ing toward  Mexico.  Near  the  ferry  is  the  place  where  Albert 
S.  Johnston's  mule-trains  were  captured  by  the  Mormons  under 
Lot  Smith. 

In  the  middle  of  the  night  we  would  come  sometimes  upon 
mule-trains  starting  on  their  march  in  order  to  avoid  the  mid- 
day sun,  and  thus  save  water,  which  they  are  sometimes  forced 
to  carry  with  them  for  as  much  as  fifty  miles.  When  we 
found  them  halted,  they  were  always  camped  on  bluffs  and  in 
bends,  far  from  rocks  and  tufts,  behind  which  the  Indians 
might  creep  and  stampede  the  cattle :  this  they  do  by  suddenly 
swooping  down  with  fearful  noises,  and  riding  among  the 
mules  or  oxen  at  full  speed.  The  beasts  break  away  in  their 
fright,  and  arc  driven  off  before  the  sentries  have  time  to  turn 
out  the  camp. 

On  the  fourth  day  from  Denver  the  scenery  was  tame 
enough,  but  strange  in  the  extreme.  Its  characteristic  feat- 
ure was  its  breadth.  No  longer  the  rocky  defiles  of  Virginia 
Dale,  no  longer  the  glimpses  of  the  main  range  as  from  Lara- 
mie Plains  and  the  foot-hills  of  Meridian  Bow,  but  great  roll- 
ing downs  like  those  of  the  Plains  much  magnified.  We 
crossed  one  of  the  highest  passes  in  the  world  without  seeing 
snow,  but  looked  back  directly  we  were  through  it  on  snow- 
fields  behind  us  and  all  around. 

At  Elk  Mountain  Ave  suffered  greatly  from  the  frost,  but  by 
midday  we  were  taking  off  our  coats,  and  the  mules  hanging 
their  heads  in  the  sun  once  more,  while  those  which  should 
have  taken  their  places  were,  as  the  ranchman  expressed  it, 
"  kicking  their  heels  in  pure  cussedness  "  at  a  stream  some  ten 
miles  away. 

While  walking  before  the  "  hack  "  through  the  banting 
sand  of  Bitter  Creek,  I  put  up  a  bird  as  big  as  a  turkey,  which 
must,  I  suppose,  have  been  a  vulture.  The  sage-brush  grow- 
ing here  as  much  as  three  feet  high,  and  as  stout  and  gnarled 
as  century-old  heather,  gave  shelter  to  a  few  coveys  of  sage- 
hens,  at  which  we  shot  without  much  success,  although  they 
seldom  ran,  and  never  rose.  Their  color  is  that  of  the  brush 
itself — a  yellowish-gray ; — and  it  is  as  hard  to  see  them  as  to 
pick  up  a  partridge  on  a  sun-dried  fallow  at  home  in  England. 


108  Greater   Britain. 

Of  wolves  and  rattlesnakes  there  were  plenty,  but  of  big  game 
we  saw  but  little,  only  a  few  black-tails  in  the  day. 

This  track  is  more  travelled  by  trains  than  is  the  Smoky 
Hill  route,  which  accounts  for  the  absence  of  game  on  the 
line  ;  but  that  there  is  plenty  about  close  at  hand  is  clear  from 
the  way  we  were  fed.  Smoky  Hill  route  starvation  was  for- 
gotten in  piles  of  steaks  of  elk  and  antelope ;  but  still  no  fruit, 
no  vegetable,  no  bread,  no  drink  save  "  sage-brush  tea,"  and 
that  half  poisoned  with  the  water  of  the  alkaline  creeks. 

Jerked  buffalo  had  disappeared  from  our  meals.  The 
droves  never  visit  the  Sierra  Madre  now,  and  scientific  books 
have  said  that  in  the  mountains  they  were  ever  unknown.  In 
Bridger's  Pass  we  saw  the  skulls  of  not  less  than  twenty  buf- 
falo, which  is  proof  enough  that  they  once  were  here,  though 
perhaps  long  ago.  The  skin  and  bones  will  last  about  a  year 
after  the  beast  has  died,  for  the  wolves  tear  them  to  pieces  to 
get  at  the  mai'row  within,  but  the  skull  they  never  touch  ; 
and  the  oldest  ranchman  failed  to  give  me  an  answer  as  to 
how  long  skulls  and  horns  might  last.  We  saw  no  buffalo 
roads  like  those  across  the  Plains. 

From  the  absence  of  buffalo,  absence  of  birds,  absence  of 
flowers,  absence  even  of  Indians,  the  Rocky  Mountain  plateau 
is  more  of  a  solitude  than  are  the  Plains.  It  takes  days  to 
see  this,  for  you  naturally  notice  it  less.  On  the  Plains,  the 
glorious  climate,  the  masses  of  rich  blooming  plants,  the  mil- 
lions of  beasts,  and  insects,  and  birds,  all  seem  prepared  to  the 
hand  of  man,  and  for  man  you  are  continually  seai*ching. 
Each  time  you  round  a  hill  you  look  for  the  smoke  of  the 
farm.  Here  on  the  mountains  you  feel  as  you  do  on  the  sea : 
it  is  nature's  own  lone  solitude,  but  from  no  fault  of  ours — 
the  higher  parts  of  the  plateau  were  not  made  for  man. 

Early  on  the  fifth  night  Ave  dashed  suddenly  out  of  utter 
darkness  into  a  mountain  glen  blazing  with  fifty  fires,  and  per- 
fumed with  the  scent  of  burning  cedar.  As  many  wagons  as 
there  were  fires  were  corralled  in  an  ellipse  about  the  road,  and 
600  cattle  were  pastured  within  the  fire-glow  in  rich  grass  that 
told  of  water.  Men  and  women  were  seated  round  the  camp- 
fires,  praying  and  singing  hymns.  As  we  drove  in  they  rose 
and  cheered  us  "  on  your  way  to  Zion."  Our  Gentile  driver 
yelled  back  the  war-whoop  "  How  !  How  !  How  !  How — av  ! 


Rocky  Mountains.  109 

We'll  give  ycr  love  to  Brigham ;"  and  back  wont  the  poor 
travellers  to  their  prayers  again.  It  was  a  bull-train  of  the 
Mormon  immigration. 

Five  minutes  after  we  had  passed  the  camp  we  were  back 
in  civilization,  and  plunged  into  polygamous  society  all  at  once, 
with  Bishop  Myers,  the  keeper  of  Bear  River  ranch,  drawing 
water  from  the  well,  while  Mrs.  Myers  No.  1  cooked  the  chops, 
and  Mrs.  Myers  No.  2  laid  the  table  neatly. 

The  kind  bishoj)  made  us  sit  before  the  fire  till  we  were 
warm,  and  filled  our  "  hack "  with  hay  that  we  might  con- 
tinue so,  and  off  we  went,  inclined  to  look  favorably  on  polyg- 
amy after  such  experience  of  polygamists. 

Leaving  Bear  River  about  midnight,  at  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning  of  the  sixth  day  we  commenced  the  descent  of  Echo 
Canon,  the  grandest  of  all  the  gully  passes  of  the  Wasatch 
range.  The  night  was  so  clear  that  I  was  able  to  make 
some  outline  sketches  of  the  cliffs  from  the  ranch  where  we 
changed  mules.  Echo  Canon  is  the  Thermopylae  of  Utah, 
the  pass  that  the  Mormons  fortified  against  the  United  States 
forces  under  Albert  S.  Johnston  at  the  time  of  "  Buchanan's 
raid."  Twenty-six  miles  long,  often  not  more  than  a  few  yards 
wide  at  the  bottom,  and  a  few  hundred  feet  at  the  top,  with  an 
overhanging  cliff  on  the  north  side,  and  a  mountain  wall  on 
the  south,  Echo  Canon  would  be  no  easy  pass  to  force.  Gov- 
ernment will  do  well  to  prevent  the  Pacific  Railroad  from  fol- 
lowing this  defile. 

After  breakfast  at  Coalville,  the  Mormon  Newcastle,  situ- 
ated in  a  smiling  valley  not  unlike  that  between  Martigny  and 
Saint  Maurice,  Ave  dashed  on  past  Kimball's  ranch,  where  we 
once  more  hitched  horses  instead  of  mules,  and  began  our  de- 
scent of  seventeen  miles  down  Big  Canon,  the  best  of  all  the 
passes  of  the  Wasatch.  Rounding  a  spur  at  the  end  of  our 
six  hundredth  mile  from  Denver,  we  first  sighted  the  Mormon 
promised  land. 

The  sun  was  setting  over  the  great  dead  lake  to  our  right, 
lighting  up  the  valley  with  a  silvery  gleam  from  Jordan  River, 
and  the  hills  with  a  golden  glow  from  off  the  snow-fields  of 
the  many  mountain  chains  and  peaks  around.  In  our  front, 
the  Oquirrh,  or  Western  range,  stood  out  in  sharp  purple  out- 
lines upon  a  sea-colored  sky.      To  our  left  were  the  Utah 


-*** 


110  Greater  Britain. 

Mountains,  blushing  rose,  all  about  our  heads  the  Wasatch 
glowing  in  orange  and  gold.  From  the  flat  valley  in  the 
snowy  distance  rose  the  smoke  of  many  houses,  the  dust  of 
many  droves ;  on  the  bench-land  of  Ensign  Peak,  on  the  lake 
side,  white  houses  peeped  from  among  the  trees  modestly, 
and  hinted  the  presence  of  the  city. 

Here  was  Plato's  table-land  of  the  Atlantic  isle — one  great 
field  of  corn  and  wheat,  where  only  twenty  years  ago  Fre- 
mont, the  Pathfinder,  reported  wheat  and  corn  impossible. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

E  E I G  H  A  M     YOUNG 


"  I  look  upon  Mohammed  and  Brigham  as  the  very  best 
men  that  God  could  send  as  ministei*s  to  those  unto  whom  He 
sent  them,"  wrote  Elder  Frederick  Evans,  of  the  "  Shaker  " 
village  of  New  Lebanon,  in  a  letter  to  us,  inclosing  another 
by  way  of  introduction  to  the  Mormon  President. 

Credentials  from  the  Shaker  to  the  Mormon  chief — from 
the  great  living  exponent  of  the  principle  of  celibacy  to  the 
"  most  married  man  "  in  all  America — were  not  to  be  kept 
undelivered ;  so  the  moment  we  had  taken  a  bath,  we  posted 
off  to  a  merchant  to  whom  we  had  letters,  that  we  might  in- 
quire when  his  spiritual  chief  and  military  ruler  would  be 
home  again  from  his  "  trip  north."  The  answer  was,  "  To- 
morrow." 

After  watching  the  last  gleams  fade  from  the  snow-fields 
upon  the  Wasatch,  we  parted  for  the  night,  as  I  had  to  sleep 
in  a  private  house,  the  hotel  being  filled  even  to  the  balcony. 
As  I  entered  the  drawing-room  of  my  entertainer,  I  heard  the 
voice  of  a  lady  reading,  and  caught  enough  of  what  she  said 
to  be  aware  that  it  was  a  defense  of  polygamy.  She  ceased 
when  she  saw  the  stranger ;  but  I  found  that  it  was  my  host's 
first  wife  reading  Belinda  Pratt's  book  to  her  daughters — 
girls  just  blooming  into  womanhood. 

After  an  agreeable  chat  with  the  ladies,  doubly  pleasant  as 
it  followed  upon  a  long  absence  from  civilization,  I  went  to 
my  room,  which  I  afterward  found  to  be  that  of  the  eldest 


»£ 


Brigham  Young.  1H 

son,  a  youth  of  sixteen  years.  In  one  corner  stood  two  Bal- 
lard rifles,  and  two  revolvers  and  a  militia  uniform  hung  from 
pegs  upon  the  Avail.  When  I  lay  down  with  my  hands  under- 
neath the  pillow — an  attitude  instinctively  adopted  to  escape 
the  sand-flies,  I  touched  something  cold.  I  felt  it — a  full-sized 
Colt,  and  capped.  Such  was  my  first  introduction  to  "Utah 
Mormonism. 

On  the  morrow  we  had  the  first  and  most  formal  of  our 
four  interviews  with  the  Mormon  President,  the  conversation 
lasting  three  hours,  and  all  the  leading  men  of  the  Church  be- 
ing present.  When  we  rose  to  leave,  Brigham  said,  "  Come 
to  see  me  here  again :  Brother  Stenhouse  will  show  you  every 
thing ;"  and  then  blessed  us  in  these  words :  "  Peace  be  with 
you,  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ." 

Elder  Stenhouse  followed  us  out  of  the  presence,  and  some- 
what anxiously  put  the  odd  question,  "  Well,  is  he  a  white 
man?"  "White"  is  used  in  Utah  as  a  general  term  of 
praise :  a  white  man  is  a  man — to  use  our  corresponding  idiom 
— not  so  black  as  he  is  painted.  A  "  white  country  "  is  a  coun- 
try with  grass  and  trees ;  just  as  a  white  man  means  a  man 
who  is  morally  not  a  Ute,  so  a  white  country  is  a  land  in 
which  others  than  Utes  can  dwell. 

We  made  some  complimentary  answer  to  Stenhouse's  ques- 
tion: but  it  was  impossible  not  to  feel  that  the  real  point  was, 
Is  Brigham  sincere  ? 

Brigham's  deeds  have  been  those  of  a  sincere  man.  His 
bitterest  opponents  can  not  dispute  the  fact  that  in  1844,  when 
Nauvoo  was  about  to  be  deserted,  owing  to  the  attacks  of  a 
ruffianly  mob,  Brigham  rushed  to  the  front,  and  took  the 
chief  command.  To  be  a  Mormon  leader  then  was  to  be  a 
leader  of  an  outcast  people,  with  a  price  set  on  his  head,  in  a 
Missourian  county  in  which  almost  every  man  who  was  not  a 
Mormon  was  by  profession  an  assassin.  In  the  sense,  too,  of 
believing  that  he  is  what  he  professes  to  be,  Brigham  is  un- 
doubtedly sincere.  In  the  wider  sense  of  being  that  which 
he  professes  to  be  he  comes  off  as  well,  if  only  we  will  read 
his  words  in  the  way  he  speaks  them.  He  tells  us  that  he  is 
a  prophet — God's  representative  on  earth  ;  but  when  I  asked 
him  whether  he  was  of  a  wholly  different  spiritual  rank  to 
that  held  by  other  devout  men,  he  said,  "  By  no  means.     I  am 


112  Greater  Britain. 

a  prophet — one  of  many.  All  good  men  are  prophets ;  bnt 
God  has  blessed  me  with  peculiar  favor  in  revealing  His  will 
oftener  and  more  clearly  through  me  than  through  other 
men." 

Those  who  would  understand  Brigham's  revelations  must 
read  Bentham.  The  leading  Mormons  are  utilitarian  deists. 
"  God's  will  be  done,"  they,  like  other  deists,  say  is  to  be  our 
rule ;  and  God's  will  they  find  in  written  Revelation  and  in 
Utility.  God  has  given  men,  by  the  actual  hand  of  angels, 
the  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mormon,  the  Book  of  Covenants,  the 
revelation  upon  Plural  Marriage.  When  these  are  exhausted, 
man,  seeking  for  God's  will,  has  to  turn  to  the  principle  of 
Utility :  that  which  is  for  the  happiness  of  mankind — that  is, 
of  the  Church — is  God's  will,  and  must  be  done.  While 
Utility  is  their  only  index  to  God's  pleasure,  they  admit  that 
the  Church  must  be  ruled — that  opinions  may  differ  as  to 
what  is  the  good  of  the  Church,  and  therefore  the  will  of 
God.  They  meet,  then,  annually,  in  an  assembly  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  electing  Church  officers  by  popular  will  and  acclama- 
tion, they  see  God's  finger  in  the  ballot-box.  They  say,  like 
the  Jews  in  the  election  of  their  judges,  that  the  choice  of  the 
people  is  the  choice  of  God.  This  is  what  men  like  John 
Taylor  or  Daniel  Wells  appear  to  feel ;  the  ignorant  are  per- 
mitted to  look  upon  Brigham  as  something  more  than  man,  and 
though  Brigham  himself  does  nothing  to  confirm  this  view, 
the  leaders  foster  the  delusion.  When  I  asked  Stenhouse, "  Has 
Brigham's  re-election  as  Prophet  ever  been  opposed  ?"  he  an- 
swered sharply,  "  I  should  like  to  see  the  man  who'd  do  it." 

Brigham's  personal  position  is  a  strange  one :  he  calls  him- 
self Prophet,  declares  that  he  has  revelations  from  God  him- 
self ;  but  when  you  ask  him  quietly  what  all  this  means,  you 
find  that  for  Prophet  you  should  read  Political  Philosopher. 
He  sees  that  a  canal  from  Utah  Lake  to  Salt  Lake  Valley 
would  be  of  vast  utility  to  the  Church  and  people — that  a  new 
settlement  is  urgently  required.  He  thinks  about  these  things 
till  they  dominate  in  his  mind — take  in  his  brain  the  shape  of 
physical  creations.  He  dreams  of  the  canal,  the  city — sees 
them  before  him  in  his  waking  moments.  That  which  is  so 
clearly  for  the  good  of  God's  people  becomes  God's  will. 
Next  Sunday  at  the  Tabernacle  he  steps  to  the  front  and  says, 


Brigham  \  OUNG.  113 

"  God  has  spoken :  He  has  said  unto  his  Prophet,  '  Get  thcc, 
up,  Brigham,  and  build  Me  a  city  in  the  fertile  valley  to  the 
South,  where  there  is  water,  where  there  are  fish,  where  the 
sun  is  strong  enough  to  ripen  the  cotton-plants,  and  give  rai- 
ment as  well  as  food  to  My  saints  on  earth.'  Brethren  willing 
to  aid  God's  work  should  come  to  me  before  the  bishops' 
meeting."  As  the  Prophet  takes  his  seat  again  and  puts  on 
Ins  broad-brimmed  hat,  a  hum  of  applause  runs  round  the 
Bowery,  and  teams  and  barrows  are  freely  promised. 

Sometimes  the  canal,  the  bridge,  the  city  may  prove  a  fail- 
ure, but  this  is  not  concealed  :  the  Prophet's  human  tongue 
may  blunder  even  when  he  is  communicating  holy  things. 

"  After  all,"  Brigham  said  to  me  the  day  before  I  left, "  the 
highest  inspiration  is  good  sense — the  knowing  what  to  do, 
and  how  to  do  it." 

In  all  this  it  is  hard  for  us,  with  our  English  hatred  of 
casuistry  and  hair-splitting,  to  see  sincerity ;  still,  given  his 
foundation,  Brigham  is  sincere.  Like  other  political  religion- 
ists, he  must  feel  himself  morally  bound  to  stick  at  nothing 
when  the  interests  of  the  Church  are  at  stake.  To  prefer 
man's  life  or  property  to  the  service  of  God  must  be  a  crime 
in  such  a  Church.  The  Mormons  deny  the  truth  of  the  mur- 
der-stories alleged  against  the  Danites,  but  they  avoid  doing 
so  in  sweeping  or  even  general  terms — though  if  need  were, 
of  course  they  would  be  bound  to  lie  as  well  as  to  kill  in  the 
name  of  God  and  His  holy  Prophet. 

The  secret  policy  which  I  have  sketched  gives,  evidently, 
enormous  power  to  some  one  man  within  the  Church  ;  but  the 
Mormon  Constitution  does  not  very  clearly  point  out  who 
that  man  shall  be.  With  a  view  to  the  possible  future  failure 
of  leaders  of  great  personal  qualifications,  the  first  Presidency 
consists  of  three  members  with  equal  rank ;  but  to  his  place 
in  the  Trinity  Brigham  unites  the  office  of  Trustee  in  Trust, 
which  gives  him  the  control  of  the  funds  and  tithing,  or  Church 
taxation. 

All  are  not  agreed  as  to  what  should  be  Brigham's  place 
in  Utah.  Stenhouse  said  one  day,  "  I  am  one  of  those  who 
think  that  our  President  should  do  every  thing.  He  has 
made  this  Church  and  this  country,  and  should  have  his  way 
in  all  things ;  saying  so   gets  me  into  trouble  with  some." 


114  Greater  Britain. 

The  writer  of  a  report  of  Brigliara's  tour  which  appeared  in 
the  Salt  Lake  Telegraph  the  day  we  reached  the -city,  used 
the  words,  "  God  never  spoke  through  man  more  clearly  than 
through  President  Young." 

One  day,  when  Stenhouse  was  speaking  of  the  morality  of  the 
Mormon  people,  he  said,  "  Our  penalty  for  adultery  is  death." 
Remembering  the  Danites,  we  were  down  on  him  at  once : 
"  Do  you  inflict  it  ?"  "  No ;  but — well,  not  practically ;  but 
really  it  is  so.  A  man  who  commits  adultery  withers  away 
and  perishes.  A  man  sent  away  from  his  wives  upon  a  mis- 
sion that  may  last  for  years,  if  he  lives  not  purely — if  when 
he  returns,  he  can  not  meet  the  eye  of  Brigham,  better  for  him 
to  be  at  once  in  hell.     He  withers." 

Brigham  himself  has  spoken  in  strong  words  of  his  own 
power  over  the  Mormon  people :  "  Let  the  talking-folk  at 
Washington  say,  if  they  please,  that  I  am  no  longer  Governor 
of  Utah.  I  am,  and  will  be,  governor  until  God  Almighty 
says, '  Brigham,  you  need  not  be  governor  any  more.'  " 

Brigham's  head  is  that  of  a  man  who  nowhere  could  be 
second. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

MOEilONDOM. 

We  had  been  presented  at  court,  and  favorably  received ; 
asked  to  call  again  ;  admitted  to  State  secrets  of  the  presidency. 
From  this  moment  our  position  in  the  city  was  secured. 
Mormon  seats  in  the  theatre  were  placed  at  our  disposal ;  the 
director  of  immigration,  the  presiding  bishop,  Colonel  Hunter 
— a  grim,  weather-beaten  Indian-fighter — and  his  coadjutors 
carried  us  off  to  see  the  reception  of  the  bull-train  at  the  El- 
ephant Corral ;  we  were  offered  a  team  to  take  us  to  the 
Lake,  which  we  refused  only  because  we  had  already  accepted 
the  loan  of  one  from  a  Gentile  merchant ;  presents  of  peaches 
and  invitations  to  lunch,  dinner,  and  supper  came  pouring  in 
upon  us  from  all  sides.  In  a  single  morning  we  were  visited 
by  four  of  the  Apostles  and  nine  other  leading  members  of 
the  Church.  Ecclesiastical  dignitaries  sat  upon  our  single 
chair  and  wash-hand-stand ;  and  one  bed  groaned  under  the 


MORMONDOM.  115 

weight  of  George  A.  Smith,  "Church  historian,"  while  the 
other  bore  ./Esop's  load  —  the  peaches  he  had  brought. 
These  growers  of  fruit  from  standard  trees  think  but  small 
things  of  our  English  wall  fruit,  "  baked  on  one  side  and 
frozen  on  the  other,"  as  they  say.  There  is  a  mellowness  about 
the  Mormon  peaches  that  would  drive  our  gardeners  to  despair. 

One  of  our  callers  was  Captain  Hooper,  the  Utah  delegate 
to  Congress.  He  is  an  adept  at  the  Western  plan  of  getting 
out  of  a  fix  by  telling  you  a  story.  When  we  laughingly  al- 
luded to  his  lack  of  wives,  and  the  absurdity  of  a  monogamist 
representing  Utah,  he  said  that  the  people  at  Washington  all 
believed  that  Utah  had  sent  them  a  polygamist.  There  is  a 
rule  that  no  one  with  the  entry  shall  take  with  him  more 
than  one  lady  to  the  White  House  receptions.  A  member  of 
Congress  was  urged  by  three  ladies  to  take  them  with  him. 
He,  as  men  do,  said, "  The  thing  is  impossible,"  and  did  it. 
Presenting  himself  with  the  bevy  at  the  door,  the  usher  stop- 
ped him :  "  Can't  pass ;  only  one  friend  admitted  with  each 
member."  "  Suppose,  sir,  that  I'm  the  delegate  from  Utah 
Territory  ?"  said  the  Congressman.  "  Oh,  pass  in,  sir,  pass 
in,"  was  the  instant  answer  of  the  usher.  The  story  reminds 
me  of  poor  Browne's  (x\rtemus  Ward)  "  family "  ticket  to 
his  lecture  at  Salt  Lake  City :  "  Admit  the  bearer  and  one 
wife."  Hooper  is  said  to  be  under  pressure  at  this  moment 
on  the  question  of  polygamy,  for  he  is  a  favorite  with  the 
Prophet,  who  can  not,  however,with  consistency  promote  him 
to  office  in  the  Church  on  account  of  a  saying  of  his  own,  "  A 
man  with  one  wife  is  of  less  account  before  God  than  a  man 
with  no  wives  at  all." 

Our  best  opportunity  of  judging  of  the  Mormon  ladies  was 
at  the  theatre,  which  we  attended  regularly,  sitting  now  in 
Elder  Stenkouse's  "  family  "  seats,  now  with  General  Wells. 
Here  we  saw  all  the  wives  of  the  leading  Churchmen  of  the 
city ;  in  their  houses  we  saw  only  those  they  chose  to  show  us : 
in  no  case  but  that  of  the  Clawson  family  did  we  meet  in  society 
all  the  wives.  We  noticed  at  once  that  the  leading  ladies  were 
all  alike — full  of  taste,  full  of  sense,  but  full  at  the  same  time  of 
a  kind  of  unconscious  melancholy.  Everywhere  as  you  looked 
round  the  house,  you  met  the  sad  eye  which  I  had  seen  but 
once  before  —  among  the  Shakers  at  New  Lebanon.      The 


116  Greater  Britain. 

women  here,  knowing  no  other  state,  seem  to  think  themselves 
as  happy  as  the  day  is  long :  their  eye  alone  is  there  to  show 
the  Gentile  that  they  are,  if  the  expression  may  be  allowed, 
unhappy  without  knowing  it.  That  these  Mormon  women 
love  their  religion  and  reverence  its  priests  is  but  a  conse- 
quence of  its  being  "  their  religion" — the  system  in  the  midst 
of  which  they  have  been  brought  up.  Which  of  us  is  there 
who  does  not  set  up  some  idol  in  his  heart  round  which  he 
weaves  all  that  he  has  of  poetry  and  devotion  in  his  character. 
Art,  hero-worship,  patriotism  are  forms  of  this  great  tendency. 
That  the  Mormon  girls,  who  arc  educated  as  highly  as  those 
of  any  country  in  the  world — who,  like  all  American  girls,  are 
allowed  to  wander  where  they  please  —  who  are  certain  of 
protection  in  any  of  the  fifty  Gentile  houses  in  the  city,  and 
absolutely  safe  in  Camp  Douglas  at  the  distance  of  two  miles 
from  the  city  wall — all  consent  deliberately  to  enter  on  polyg- 
amy— shows  clearly  enough  that  they  can,  as  a  rule,  have  no 
dislike  to  it  beyond  such  a  feeling  as  public  opinion  will  speed- 
ily overcome. 

Discussion  of  the  institution  of  plural  marriage  in  Salt  Lake 
City  is  fruitless ;  all  that  can  be  done  is  to  observe.  In  assault^ 
ing  the  Mormon  citadel,  you  strike  against  the  air.  "  Polyg- 
amy degrades  the  woman,"  you  begin.  "  Morally  or  social- 
ly ?"  says  the  Mormon.  "  Socially."  "  Granted,"  is  the  reply, 
"and  that  is  a  most  desirable  consummation.  By  socially 
lowering,  it  morally  raises  the  woman.  It  makes  her  a  serv- 
ant, but  it  makes  her  pure  and  good." 

It  is  always  well  to  remember  that  if  we  have  one  argument 
against  polygamy  which  from  our  Gentile  point  of  view  is  un- 
answerable, it  is  not  necessary  that  Ave  should  rack  our  brains 
for  others.  All  our  modern  experience  is  favorable  to  rank- 
ing women  as  man's  equal ;  polygamy  assumes  that  she  shall 
be  his  servant — loving,  faithful,  cheerful,  willing,  but  still  a 
servant. 

The  opposite  poles  upon  the  woman  question  are  Utah 
polygamy  and  Kansas  female  suffrage. 


Western  Editors.  117 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

WESTERN     EDITORS. 

The  attack  upon  Mormonclom  has  been  systematized,  and 
is  conducted  with  military  skill,  by  trench  and  parallel.  The 
New  England  papers  having  called  for  "  facts "  whereon  to 
base  their  homilies,  General  Connor,  of  Fenian  fame,  set  up 
the  Union  Vedette  in  Salt  Lake  City,  and  publishes  on  Satur- 
days a  sheet  expressly  intended  for  Eastern  reading.  The 
mantle  of  the  Sangamo  Journal  has  fallen  on  the  Vedette, 
and  John  C.  Bennett  is  effaced  by  Connor.  From  this  source 
it  is  that  come  the  whole  of  the  paragraphs  against  Brigham 
and  Mormondom  which  appear  in  the  Eastern  papers,  and 
find  their  way  to  London.  The  editor  has  to  fill  his  paper 
with  peppery  leaders,  well-spiced  telegrams,  stinging  "  facts." 
Every  week  there  must  be  something  that  can  be  used  and 
quoted  against  Brigham.  The  Eastern  remarks  upon  quo- 
tations in  turn  are  quoted  at  Salt  Lake.  Under  such  circum- 
stances, even  telegrams  can  be  made  to  take  a  flavor.  In  to- 
day's Vedette  we  have  one  from  St.  Joseph,  describing  how 
above  one  thousand  "  of  these  dirty,  filthy  dupes  of  Great  Salt 
Lake  iniquity  "  are  now  squatting  round  the  packet  depot 
awaiting  transport.  Another  from  Chicago  tells  us  that  the 
seven  thousand  European  Mormons  who  have  this  year  passed 
up  the  Missouri  River  "  are  of  the  lowest  and  most  ignorant 
classes."  The  leader  is  directed  against  Mormons  in  gener- 
al, and  Stenhouse  in  particular,  as  editor  of  one  of  the  Mor- 
mon papers,  and  ex-postmaster  of  the  Territory.  He  has  al- 
ready had  cause  to  fear  the  Vedette,  as  it  was  through  the 
exertions  of  its  editor  that  he  lost  his  office.  This  matter  is 
referred  to  in  the  leader  of  to-day :  "  When  we  found  our 
letters  scattered  about  the  streets  in  fragments,  we  succeeded 
in  getting  an  honest  postmaster  appointed  in  place  of  the  ed- 
itor of  the  Telegraph  " — "  an  organ  where  even  carrots,  pump- 
kins, and  potatoes  are  current  funds  " — "  directed  by  a  clique 
of  foreign  writers,  who  can  hardly  speak  our  language,  and 


118  Greater  Britain. 

who  never  drew  a  loyal  breath  since  they  came  to  Utah." 
The  Mormon  tax  frauds  and  the  Mormon  police  likewise  come 
in  for  their  share  of  abuse,  and  the  writer  concludes  with  a 
pathetic  plea  against  arrest  "  for  quietly  indulging  in  a  glass 
of  wine  in  a  private  room  with  a  friend." 

Attacks  such  as  these  make  one  understand  the  suspicious- 
ness of  the  Mormon  leaders,  and  the  slowness  of  Stenhouse 
and  his  friends  to  take  a  joke  if  it  concerns  the  Church. 
Poor  Artemus  Ward  once  wrote  to  Stenhouse,  "  Ef  you  can't 
take  a  joke,  you'll  be  darned,  and  you  oughter ;"  but  the  jest 
at  which  he  can  laugh  has  wrought  no  cure.     Ileber  Kimball 

said  to  me  one  day,  "  They're  all  alike.     There  was came 

here  to  write  a  book,  and  we  thought  better  of  him  than  of 
most.  I  showed  him  more  kindness  than  I  ever  showed  a 
man  before  or  since,  and  then  he  called  me  a  '  hoary  repro- 
bate.'    I  would  advise  him  not  to  pass  this  way  next  time." 

The  suspicion  often  takes  odd  shapes.  One  Sunday  morn- 
ing at  the  Tabernacle  I  remarked  that  the  Prophet's  daugh- 
ter, Zina,  had  on  the  same  dress  she  had  worn  the  evening 
before  at  the  theatre  in  playing  "  Mrs.  Musket,"  in  the  farce 
of  "  My  Husband's  Ghost."  It  was  a  black  silk  gown,  Avith  a 
vandyke  flounce  of  white,  impossible  to  mistake.  I  pointed 
it  out  in  joke  to  a  Mormon  friend,  when  he  denied  my  asser- 
tion in  the  most  emphatic  way,  although  he  could  not  have 
known  for  certain  that  I  was  wrong,  as  he  sat  next  to  me  in 
the  theatre  during  the  whole  play. 

The  Mormons  will  talk  freely  of  their  own  suspiciousness. 
They  say  that  the  coldness  with  which  travellers  are  usually 
received  at  Salt  Lake  City  is  the  consequence  of  years  of  total 
misrepresentation.  They  forget  that  they  are  arguing  in  a  cir- 
cle, and  that  this  misrepresentation  is  itself  sometimes  the  re- 
sult of  their  reserve. 

The  news  and  advertisements  are  even  more  amusing  than 
the  leaders  in  the  Vedette.  A  paragraph  tells  us,  for  instance, 
that  "  Mrs.  Martha  Stewart  and  Mrs.  Robertson,  of  San  An- 
toine,  lately  had  an  impromptu  fight  with  revolvers ;  Mrs. 
Stewart  was  badly  winged."  Nor  is  this  the  only  reference 
in  the  paper  to  shooting  by  ladies,  as  another  paragraph  tells 
how  a  young  girl,  frightened  by  a  sham  ghost,  drew  on  the 
would-be  apparition,  and  with  six  barrels   shot  him  twice 


Western  Editors.  119 

through  the  head,  and  four  times  "  in  the  region  of  the  heart." 
A  quotation  from  the  Oicyhee  Avalanche,  speaking  of  gam- 
hling-hells,  tells  us  that  "  one  hurdy  shehang  "  in  Silver  City- 
shipped  8000  dollars,  as  the  net  proceeds  of  its  July  business. 
"  These  leeches  corral  more  clear  cash  thau  most  quartz-mills," 
remonstrates  the  editor.  "  Corral,"  in  this  sense,  is  the  Mex- 
ican cattle  inclosure ;  the  yard  where  the  team  -  mules  are 
ranched  ;  the  kraal  of  Cape  Colony,  which,  on  the  Plains  and 
the  Plateau,  serves  as  a  fort  for  men  as 'well  as  a  fold  for 
oxen,  and  resembles  the  serai  of  the  East.  The  word  "to 
corral "  means  to  turn  into  one  of  these  pens ;  and  thence 
"  to  pouch,"  "  to  pocket,"  "  to  bag,"  to  get  well  into  hand. 

The  advertisements  are  in  keeping  with  the  news.  "Every 
thing,  from  a  salamander  safe  to  a  Limerick  fish-hook,"  is  of- 
fered by  one  firm.  "  Fifty-three  and  a  half  and  three  and 
three-quarter  thimble-skein  Schuttler  wagons,"  is  offered  by  an- 
other. Again,  an  advertiser  bids  us  "  Spike  the  Guns  of  Hum- 
bug !  and  Beware  of  Deleterious  Dyes  !  Refuse  to  have  your 
Heads  Baptized  with  Liquid  Fire!"  Another  says,  "If  you 
want  a  paper  free  from  entanglements  of  cliques,  and  antagonis- 
tic to  the  corrupting  evils  of  factionism,  subscribe  to  the  Mon- 
tana Radiator"  But  nothing  beats  the  following :  "  Butcher's 
Dead-shot  for  Bed-bugs  !  Curls  them  up  as  fire  does  a  leaf  ! 
Try  it,  and  sleep  in  peace  !     Sold  by  all  live  druggists." 

If  we  turn,  however,  to  the  other  Salt  Lake  papers,  the  Tel- 
egraph, an  independent  Mormon  paper,  and  the  Deseret  News, 
the  official  journal  of  the  Church,  we  find  a  contrast  to  the 
trash  of  the  Vedette.  Brigham's  paper,  clearly  printed  and  of 
a  pleasant  size,  is  filled  with  the  best  and  latest  news  from  the 
outlying  portions  of  the  Territory  and  from  Europe.  The 
motto  on  its  head  is  a  simple  one — "  Truth  and  Liberty,"  and 
twenty-eight  columns  of  solid  news  are  given  us.  Among  the 
items  is  an  account  of  a  fight  ujion  the  Smoky  Hill  route, 
which  occurred  on  the  day  we  reached  this  city,  and  in  which 
two  teamsters — George  Hill  and  Luke  West — were  killed  by 
the  Kiowas  and  Cheyennes.  A  loyal  Union  article  from  the 
pen  of  Albert  Carrington,  the  editor,  is  followed  by  one  upon 
1he  natural  advantages  of  Utah,  in  which  the  writer  complains 
that  the  very  men  who  ridiculed  the  Mormons  for  settling  in 
a  desert  are  now  declaiming  against  their  beintc  allowed  to 


120  Greater  Britain. 

squat  upon  one  of  the  "  most  fertile  locations  in  the  United 
States."  The  same  paper  asserts  that  Mormon  success  is  se- 
cured only  by  Mormon  industry,  and  that  as  a  merely  com- 
mercial speculation,  apart  from  the  religious  impulse,  the  culti- 
vation of  Utah  would  not  pay :  "  Utah  is  no  place  for  the  loaf- 
er or  the  lazy  man."  An  official  report,  like  the  Court  Circu- 
lar of  England,  is  headed, "  President  Brigham  Young's  trip 
North,"  and  is  signed  by  G.  D.  "Watt,  "  Reporter  "  to  the 
Church.  The  Old  Testament  is  not  spared.  "  From  what  we 
saw  of  the  timbered  mountains,"  writes  one  reporter, "  we  had 
no  despondency  of  Israel  ever  failing  for  material  to  build  up, 
beautify,  and  adorn  pleasant  habitations  in  that  part  of  Zion." 
A  theatrical  criticism  is  not  wanting,  and  the  Church  actors 
come  in  for  "  praise  all  around."  In  another  part  of  the  paper 
are  telegraphic  reports  from  the  captains  of  the  seven  immi- 
grant trains  not  yet  come  in,  giving  their  position,  and  details 
of  the  number  of  days'  march  for  which  they  have  provisions 
still  in  hand.  One  reports  "  thirty-eight  head  of  cattle  stolen ;" 
another,  "  a  good  deal  of  mountain  fever ;"  but,  on  the  whole, 
the  telegrams  look  well.  The  editor,  speaking  of  the  two  En- 
glish visitors  now  in  the  city,  says :  "  We  greet  them  to  our 
mountain  habitation,  and  bid  them  welcome  to  our  orchard  ; 
and  that's  considerable  for  an  editor,  especially  if  he  has  plural 
responsibilities  to  look  after."  Bishop  Harrington  reports 
from  American  Fort  that  every  body  is  thriving  there,  and 
"  doing  as  the  Mormon  creed  directs — minding  their  own  bus- 
iness." "  That's  good,  Bishop,"  says  the  editor.  The  "  Pas- 
senger-list of  the  2d  Ox-train,  Captain  J.  D.  Holladay,"  is  given 
at  length ;  about  half  the  immigrants  come  with  wife  and  fam- 
ily, Aery  many  with  five  or  six  children.  From  Liverpool,  the 
chief  office  for  Europe,  comes  a  gazette  of  "  Releases  and  Ap- 
pointments," signed  "  Brigham  Young,  Jun.,  President  of  the 
Church  of  Jesus  Christ  of  Latter-day  Saints  in  the  British 
Isles  and  Adjacent  Countries,"  accompanied  by  a  dispatch,  in 
which  the  "  President  for  England  "  gives  details  of  his  visits 
to  the  Saints  in  Norway,  and  of  his  conversation  with  the 
United  States  minister  at  St.  Petersburg. 

The  Daily  Telegraph,  like  its  editor,  is  practical,  and  does 
not  deal  in  extract.  All  the  sheet,  with  the  exception  of  a  few 
columns,  is  taken  up  with  business  advertisements ;  but  these 


Western   Editors.  121 

.are  not  the  least  amusing  part  of  the  paper.  A  gigantic  fig- 
ure of  a  man  in  high  boots  and  felt  hat,  standing  on  a  ladder 
and  pasting  up  Messrs.  Eldredge  and  Clawson's  dry-goods  ad- 
vertisement, occupies  nearly  half  the  back  page.  Mr.  Birch, 
informs  "  parties  hauling  wheat  from  San  Pete  County  "  that 
his  mill  at  Fort  Birch  is  now  running,  and  that  it  is  situate  at 
the  mouth  of  Salt  Creek  Canon,  just  above  Nephi  City,  Juab 
County,  on  the  direct  road  to  Pahranagat.  A  view  of  the  fort, 
with  posterns,  parapets,  embrasures,  and  a  giant  flag,  heads  the 
advertisement.  But  the  cuts  are  not  always  so  cheerful:  one 
Far-western  paper  fills  three-quarters  of  its  front  page  with  an 
engraving  of  a  coffin.  The  editorial  columns  contain  calls  to 
the  "  brethren  with  teams"  to  aid  the  immigrants,  an  account 
of  a  "  rather  mixed  case  "  of  "  double  divorce  "  (Gentile),  and 
of  a  prosecution  of  a  man  "  for  violation  of  the  seventh  com- 
mandment." A  Mormon  police  report  is  headed  "One  drunk 
at  the  Calaboose."  Defending  himself  against  charges  of  "  di- 
recting bishops  "  and  "  steadying  the  ark,"  the  editor  calls  on 
the  bishops  to  shorten  their  sermons :  "  we  may  get  a  crack 
for  this,  but  we  can't  help  it.  We  like  variety,  life,  and  short 
meetings."  In  a  paragraph  about  his  visitors,  our  friend  the 
editor  of  the  Telegraph  said,  a  day  or  two  after  our  arrival  in 
the  city, "  If  a  stranger  can  escape  the  strychnine  clique  for 
three  days  after  arrival,  he  is  forever  afterward  safe.  Gener- 
ally the  first  twenty-four  hours  are  sufficient  to  prostrate  even 
the  very  robust."  In  a  few  words  of  regret  at  a  change  in  the 
Denver  newspaper  staff,  our  editor  says  :  "  However,  a  couple 
of  sentences  indicate  that  George  has  no  intention  of  aban- 
doning the  tripod.  That's  right :  keep  at  it,  my  boy  ;  misery 
likes  company." 

The  day  after  Ave  reached  Denver,  the  Gazette,  commenting 
on  this  same  "  George,"  said :  "  Captain  West  has  left  the 
Rocky  Mountains  News  office.  We  are  not  surprised,  as  Ave 
could  never  see  how  any  respectable  decent  gentleman  like 
George  could  get  along  with  Governor  Evans's  paid  hireling 
and  Avdielp  Avho  edits  that  delectable  sheet."  Of  the  two  pa- 
pers Avhich  exist  in  every  town  in  the  Union,  each  is  ahvays  at 
Avork  attempting  to  "  use  up "  the  other.  I  have  seen  the 
Democratic  print  of  Chicago  call  its  Republican  opponent  "  a 
radical,  disunion,  disreputable,  bankrupt,  emasculated  evening 

F 


122  Greater  Britain. 

newspaper  concern  of  this  city  " — .1  string  of  terms  by  the  side 
of  which  even  Western  utterances  pale. 

A  paragraph  headed  "  The  Millennium  "  tells  ns  that  the 
editors  of  the  Telegraph  and  Deseret  N~ews  were  seen  yester- 
day afternoon  walking  together  toward  the  Twentieth  Ward. 
Another  paragraph  records  the  ill  success  of  an  expedition 
against  Indians  who  had  been  "raiding"  down  in  "Dixie," 
or  South  Utah.  A  general  order,  signed  "  Lieut.-General  Dan- 
iel II.  Wells,"  and  dated  "  Head-quarters,  Nauvoo  Legion,"  di- 
rects the  assembly,  for  a  three  days'  "  big  drill,'.'  of  the  forces 
of  the  various  military  districts  of  the  Territory.  The  name 
of  "  Territorial  Militia,"  under  which  alone  the  United  States 
can  permit  the  existence  of  the  legion,  is  carefully  omitted. 
This  is  not  the  only  warlike  advertisement  in  the  paper :  four- 
teen cases  of  Ballard  rifles  are  offered  in  exchange  for  cattle, 
and  other  firms  offer  tents  and  side-arms  to  their  friends. 
Amusements  are  not  forgotten  :  a  cricket-match  between  two 
Mormon  settlements  in  Cache  County  is  recorded,  "  Wellsville 
whipping  Brigham  City,  with  six  wickets  to  go  down ;"  and  is 
followed  by  an  article  in  which  the  First  President  may  have 
had  a  hand,  pointing  out  that  the  Salt  Lake  Theatre  is  going 
to  be  the  greatest  of  theatres,  and  that  the  favor  of  its  audi- 
ence is  a  passport  beyond  Wallack's,  and  equal  to  Drury  Lane 
or  the  Ilaymarket.  In  sharp  contrast  to  these  signs  of  present 
prosperity,  the  First  Presidency  announce  the  annual  gather- 
ing of  the  surviving  members  of  Zion's  camp,  the  association 
of  the  first  immigrant  band. 

There  is  about  the  Mormon  papers  much  that  tells  of  long 
settlement  and  prosperity.  When  I  showed  Stenhouse  the 
Denver  Gazette  of  our  second  day  in  that  town,  he  said, 
"  Well,  Telegraph's  better  than  that !"  The  Denver  sheet  is 
a  literary  curiosity  of  the  first  order.  Printed  on  chocolate- 
colored  paper,  in  ink  of  a  not  much  darker  hue,  it  is  in  parts 
illegible,  to  the  reader's  regret ;  for  what  we  were  able  to 
make  out  was  good  enough  to  make  us  wish  for  more. 

The  difference  between  the  Mormon  and  Gentile  papers 
is  strongly  marked  in  the  advertisements.  The  Denver  Ga- 
zette is  filled  with  puffs  of  quacks  and  whisky-shops.  In  the 
column  headed  "  Business  Cards,"  Dr.  Ermerins  announces 
that  he  may  be  consulted  by  his  patients  in  the  "  French, 


Western  Editors.  123 

German,  and  English "  tongues.  Lower  down  we  have  the 
card  of  "  Dr.  Treat,  Eclectic  Physician  and  Surgeon,"  which  is 
preceded  by  an  advertisement  of  "  Sulkies  made  to  order," 
and  followed  by  a  leaded  heading  "  Know  thy  Destiny  :  Ma- 
dame Thornton,  the  English  Astrologist  and  Psychometrician, 
has  located  herself  at  Hudson,  New  York ;  by  the  aid  of  an 
instrument  of  intense  power,  known  as  the  Psychomotrope, 
she  guarantees  to  produce  a  life-like  picture  of  the  future  hus- 
band or  wife  of  the  applicant."  There  is  a  strange  turning 
toward  the  supernatural  among  this  people.  Astrology  is 
openly  professed  as  a  science  throughout  the  United  States; 
the  success  of  spiritualism  is  amazing.  The  most  sensible  men 
are  not  exempt  from  the  weakness :  the  dupes  of  the  astrolo- 
gers are  not  the  uneducated  Irish ;  they  are  the  strong-mind- 
ed, half-educated  Western  men,  shrewd  and  keen  in  trade, 
brave  in  war,  material  and  cold  in  faith,  it  would  be  supposed, 
but  credulous  to  folly,  as  we  know,  when  personal  revelation, 
the  supcrnaturalism  of  the  present  day,  is  set  before  them  in 
the  crudest  and  least  attractive  forms.  A  little  lower,  "  Char- 
ley Eyser  "  and  "  Gus  Fogus  "  advertise  their  bars.  The  lat- 
ter announces  "Lager  beer  at  only  10  cents,"  in  a  "cool  re- 
treat," "fitted  up  with  green-growing  trees."  A  returned 
warrior  heads  his  announcement,  in  huge  capitals,  "  Back 
Home  Again — An  Old  Hand  at  the  Bellows — The  Soldier 
Blacksmith : — S.  M.  Logan."  In  a  country  where  weights  and 
measures  are  rather  a  matter  of  practice  than  of  law,  Mr. 
O'Connell  does  well  to  add  to  "Lager  beer,  15  cents," 
"  Glasses  hold  two  bushels."  John  Morris,  of  the  "  Little  Gi- 
ant "  or  "  Theatre  Saloon,"  asks  us  to  "  call  and  see  him ;" 
while  his  rivals  of  the  "  Progressive  Saloon  "  offer  the  "  finest 
liquors  that  the  East  can  command."  Morris  Sigi,  whose 
"  lager  is  pronounced  A  No.  1  by  all  Avho  have  used  it,"  bids  us 
"give  him  a  fair  trial,  and  satisfy  ourselves  as  to  the  false  re- 
ports in  circulation."  Daniel  Marsh,  dealer  in  "  breech-load- 
ing guns  and  revolvers,"  adds,  "  and  any  thing  that  may  be 
wanted  from  a  cradle  to  a  coffin,  both  inclusive,  made  to  or- 
der. An  Indian  Lodge  on  view,  for  sale ;"  but  he  fails  to  name 
it  in  his  advertisement :  the  Utes  brought  it  in  too  late  for 
insertion,  perhaps. 

Advertisements  of  freight-trains  now  starting  to  the  East, 


124  Greater  Britain. 

of  mail-coaches  to  Buckskin  Joe — advertisements  slanting, 
topsy-turvy,  and  sideways  turned — complete  the  outer  sheet; 
but  some  of  them,  through  bad  ink,  printer's  errors,  strange 
English,  and  wilder  Latin,  are  wholly  unintelligible.  It  is 
hard  to  make  much  of  this,  for  instance:  " Mr.  ^Esculapius, 
no  offense,  I  hope,  as  this  is  written  extempore  and  ipso 
facto.  But,  perhaps,  I  ought  not  to  disregard  ex  unci  disce 
omnes." 

In  an  editorial  on  the  English  visitors  then  in  Denver,  the 
chance  of  putting  into  their  mouths  a  puff  of  the  Territory  of 
Colorado  was  not  lost.  We  were  made  to  "  appreciate  the 
native  energy  and  wealth  of  industry  necessary  in  building  up 
such  a  Star  of  Empire  as  Colorado."  The  next  paragraph  is 
communicated  from  Conejos,  in  the  south  of  the  Territory, 
and  says :  "  The  election  has  now  passed  off,  and  I  am  conn- 
dent  that  we  can  beat  any  ward  in  Denver,  and  give  them  two 
in  the  game,  for  rascality  in  voting."  Another  leader  calls  on 
the  people  of  Denver  to  remember  that  there  are  two  men  in 
the  Calaboose  for  mule-stealing,  and  that  the  last  man  locked 
up  for  the  offense  was  allowed  to  escape :  some  cottonwood- 
trees  still  exist,  it  believes.  In  former  times,  there  was  for 
the  lynching  here  hinted  at  a  reason  which  no  longer  exists  : 
a  man  shut  up  in  gaol  built  of  adobe,  or  sun-dried  brick,  could 
scratch  his  way  through  the  crumbling  wall  in  two  days,  so 
the  citizens  generally  hanged  him  in  one.  Now  that  the 
jails  are  in  brick  and  stone,  the  job  might  safely  be  left  to 
the  sheriff;  but  the  people  of  Denver  seem  to  trust  themselves 
better  even  than  they  do  their  delegate,  Bob  Wilson. 

A  year  or  two  ago  the  jails  were  so  crazy  that  Coloradan 
criminals,  when  given  their  choice  whether  they  would  be 
hanged  in  a  week,  or  "  as  soon  after  breakfast  to-morrow  as 
shall  be  convenient  to  the  sheriff  and  agreeable,  Mr.  Prisoner, 
to  you,"  as  the  Texan  formula  runs,  used  to  elect  for  the  quick 
delivery,  on  the  ground  that  otherwise  they  would  catch  their 
deaths  of  cold — at  least,  so  the  Denver  story  runs.  They 
have,  however,  a  method  of  getting  the  jails  inspected  here 
which  might  be  found  useful  at  home :  it  consists  of  the  sim- 
ple plan  of  giving  the  governor  of  a  jail  an  opportunity  of 
seeing  the  practical  working  of  the  system  by  locking  him  up 
inside  for  a  while. 


Western  Editors.  125 

These  Par-western  papers  are  written  or  compiled  under 
difficulties  almost  overwhelming.  Mr.  Frederick  J.  Stanton, 
at  Denver,  told  me  that  often  he  had  been  forced  to  "  set  up" 
and  print,  as  well  as  "  edit,"  the  paper  which  he  owns.  Type 
is  not  always  to  be  found.  In  its  early  days,  the  Alta  Cali- 
fornia i  once  appeared  with  a  paragraph  which  ran,  "I  have 
no  W  in  my  type,  as  there  is  none  in  the  Spanish  alphabet. 
I  have  sent  to  the  Sandwich  Islands  for  this  letter ;  in  the 
meantime  we  must  use  two  Vs." 

Till  I  had  seen  the  editor's  rooms  in  Denver,  Austin,  and 
Salt  Lake  City,  I  had  no  conception  of  the  point  to  which  dis- 
comfort could  be  carried.  For  all  these  hardships,  payment 
is  small  and  slow.  It  consists  often  of  little  but  the  satisfac- 
tion which  it  is  to  the  editor's  vanity  to  be  "  liquored  "  by  the 
best  man  of  the  place,  treated  to  an  occasional  chat  with  the 
governor  of  the  Territory,  to  a  chair  in  the  overland  Mail  Of- 
fice whenever  he  walks  in,  to  the  hand  of  the  hotel  proprietor 
whenever  he  comes  near  the  bar,  and  to  a  pistol-shot  once  or 
twice  in  a  month. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  Vedette  does  the  Mor- 
mons no  harm:  the  perpetual  reiteration  in  the  Eastern  and 
English  papers  of  three  sets  of  stories  alone  would  suffice  to 
break  down  a  flourishing  power.  The  three  lines  that  are  in- 
variably taken  as  foundations  for  their  stories  are  these — that 
the  Mormon  women  are  wretched,  and  would  fain  get  away, 
but  are  checked  by  the  Danites  ;  that  the  Mormons  are  ready 
to  fight  -with  the  Federal  troops  with  the  hope  of  success; 
that  robbery  of  the  people  by  the  Apostles  and  Elders  is  at  the 
bottom  of  Mormonism — or,  as  the  Vedette  puts  it,  "  On  tith- 
ing and  loaning  hang  all  the  law  and  the  profits." 

If  the  mere  fact  of  the  existence  of  the  Vedette  effectually 
refutes  the  stories  of  the  acts  of  the  Danites  in  these  modern 
days,  and  therefore  disposes  of  the  first  set  of  stories,  the  third 
is  equally  answered  by  a  glance  at  its  pages.  Columns  of  par- 
agraphs, sheets  of  advertisements,  testify  to  the  foundation  by 
industry,  in  the  most  frightful  desert  on  earth,  of  an  agricul- 
tural community  which  California  herself  can  not  match.  The 
Mormons  may  well  call  their  country  "  Deseret " — "  land  of  the 
bee."  The  process  of  fertilization  goes  on  day  by  day.  Six 
or  seven  years  ago  Southern  Utah  was  a  desert  bare  as  Salt 


126  Greater  Britain. 

Bush  Plains.  Irrigation  from  the  fresh-water  lake  was  car« 
ried  out  under  episcopal  direction,  and  the  result  is  the  growth 
of  fifty  kinds  of  grapes  alone.  Cotton-mills  and  vineyards  are 
springing  up  on  every  side,  and  "  Dixie  "  begins  to  look  down 
on  its  parent,  the  Salt  Lake  Valley.  Irrigation  from  the 
mountain  rills  has  done  this  miracle,  we  say,  though  the  Saints 
undoubtedly  believe  that  God's  hand  is  in  it,  helping  miracu- 
I't  usly  "  His  peculiar  people." 

In  face  of  Mormon  prosperity,  it  is  worthy  of  notice  that 
Utah  was  settled  on  the  Wakefieldian  system,  though  Brigham 
knows  nothing  of  Wakefield.  Town  population  and  country 
population  grew  up  side  by  side  in  every  valley,  and  the  plow 
was  not  allowed  to  gain  on  the  machine-saw  and  the  shuttle. 

It  is  not  only  in  water  and  verdure  that  Utah  is  naturally 
poor.  On  the  mining-map  of  the  States,  the  countries  that 
lie  around  Utah — Nevada,  Arizona,  Colorado,  Montana — are 
one  blaze  of  yellow,  and  blue,  and  red,  colored  from  end  to 
end  with  the  tints  that  are  used  to  denote  the  existence  of 
precious  metals.  Utah  is  blank  at  present — blank,  the  Mor- 
mons say,  by  nature ;  Gentiles  say,  merely  through  the  ab- 
sence of  survey;  and  they  do  their  best  to  circumvent 
Mother  Nature.  Every  fall  the  "  strychine  "  party  raise  the 
cry  of  gold  discoveries  in  Utah,  in  the  hope  of  bringing  a 
rush  of  miners  down  to  Salt  Lake  City  too  late  for  them  to 
get  away  again  before  the  snows  begin.  The  presence  of  some 
thousands  of  broad-brimmed  rowdies  in  Salt  Lake  City  for 
a  winter  would  be  the  death  of  Mormonism,  they  believe. 
Within  the  last  few  days,  I  am  told  that  prospecting  parties 
have  found  "  pay  dirt "  in  City  Canon,  which,  however,  they 
had  first  themselves  carefully  "  salted  "  with  gold-dust.  There 
is  coal  at  the  settlement  at  which  we  breakfasted  on  our  way 
from  Weber  River  to  Salt  Lake ;  and  Stenhouse  tells  us  that 
the  only  difference  between  the  Utah  coal  and  that  of  Wales 
is,  that  the  latter  will  "  burn,"  and  the  former  wonH! 

Poor  as  Utah  is  by  nature,  clear  though  it  be  that  what- 
ever value  the  soil  now  possesses,  represents  only  the  loving 
labor  bestowed  upon  it  by  the  Saints,  it  is  doubtful  whether 
they  are  to  continue  to  possess  it,  even  though  the  remaining 
string  of  Vedctte-hovn  stories  assert  that  Brigham  "  threatens 
hell "  to  the  Gentiles  that  would  expel  him. 


Utah.  127 

The  constant,  teasing,  wasp-like  pertinacity  of  the  Vedette 
has  done  some  harm  to  liberty  of  thought  throughout  the 
world. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

UTAH. 


"  When  you  are  driven  hence,  where  shall  you  go  ?" 

"  We  take  no  thought  for  the  morrow  ;  the  Lord  will  guide 
His  people,"  was  my  rebuke  from  Elder  Stenhouse,  delivered 
in  the  half-solemn,  half-laughing  manner  characteristic  of  the 
Saints.  "  You  say  miracles  are  passed  and  gone,"  he  went 
on  ;  "  but  if  God  has  ever  interfered  to  protect  a  Church,  he 
has  interposed  on  our  behalf.  In  1857,  when  the  whole  army 
of  the  United  States  was  let  slip  at  us  under  Albert  S.  John- 
ston, we  were  given  strength  to  turn  them  aside,  and  defeat 
them  without  a  blow.  The  Lord  permitted  us  to  dictate  our 
own  terms  of  peace.  Again,  when  the  locusts  came  in  such 
swarms  as  to  blacken  the  whole  valley,  and  fill  the  air  with  a 
living  fog,  God  sent  millions  of  strange  new  gulls,  and  these 
devoured  the  locusts,  and  saved  us  from  destruction.  The 
Lord  will  guide  His  people." 

Often  as  I  discussed  the  future  of  Utah  and  their  Church 
with  Mormons,  I  could  never  get  from  them  any  answer  but 
this;  they  would  never  even  express  a  belief,  as  will  many 
Western  Gentiles,  that  no  attempt  will  be  made  to  expel 
them  from  the  country  they  now  hold.  They  can  not  help 
seeing  how  immediate  is  the  danger :  from  the  American  press 
there  comes  a  cry,  "  Let  us  have  this  polygamy  put  down ;  its 
existence  is  a  disgrace  to  England,  from  which  it  springs,  a 
shame  to  America,  in  which  it  dwells,  to  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment, whose  laws  it  outrages  and  defies.  How  long  will  you 
continue  to  tolerate  this  retrogression  from  Christianity,  this 
insult  to  civilization  ?" 

With  the  New  Englanders,  the  question  is  political  as  well 
as  theological,  personal  as  wrell  as  political — political,  mainly 
because  there  is  a  great  likeness  between  Mormon  expressions 
of  belief  in  the  divine  origin  of  polygamy  and  the  Southern 
answers  to  the  Abolitionists  :  "  Abraham  was  a  slave-owner, 


128  Greater  Britain. 

and  father  of  the  faithful ;"  "  David,  the  best-loved  of  God, 
was  a  polygamist ;"  "  Show  us  a  Biblical  prohibition  of  slav- 
ery ;"  "  Show  us  a  denunciation  of  polygamy,  and  we'll  believe 
you."  It  is  this  similarity  of  the  defensive  positions  of  Mor- 
monism  and  slavery  which  has  led  to  the  present  peril  of  the 
Salt  Lake  Church:  the  New  Englanders  look  on  the  Mor- 
Dfions,  not  only  as  heretics,  but  as  friends  to  the  slave-owners  ; 
0:1  the  other  hand,  if  you  hear  a  man  warmly  praise  the  Mor- 
mons, you  may  set  him  down  as  a  Southerner,  or,  at  the  least, 
a  Democrat. 

Another  reason  for  the  hostility  of  New  England  is,  that 
while  the  discredit  of  Mormonism  falls  upon  America,  the 
American  people  have  but  little  share  in  its  existence :  a  few 
of  the  leaders  are  Xew  Englanders  and  New  Yorkers,  but  of 
the  rank  and  file,  not  one.  In  every  ten  immigrants,  the  mis- 
sionaries count  upon  finding  that  four  come  from  England, 
two  from  Wales,  one  from  the  Scotch  lowlands,  one  from 
Sweden,  one  from  Switzerland,  and  one  from  Prussia :  from 
Catholic  countries,  none ;  from  all  America,  none.  It  is 
through  this  purely  local  and  temporary  association  of  ideas 
that  Ave  see  the  strange  sight  of  a  party  of  tolerant,  large- 
hearted  Churchmen,  eager  to  march  their  armies  against  a 
Church. 

If  we  put  aside  for  a  moment  the  question  of  the  moral 
right  to  crush  Mormonism  in  the  name  of  truth,  we  find  that 
it  is,  at  all  events,  easy  enough  to  do  it.  There  is  no  difficulty 
in  finding  legal  excuses  for  action — no  danger  in  backing  the 
Federal  legislation  with  military  force.  The  legal  point  is 
clear  enough — clear  upon  a  double  issue.  Congress  can  legis- 
late for  the  Territories  in  social  matters — has,  in  fact,  already 
done  so.  Polygamy  is  at  this  moment  punishable  in  Utah, 
but  the  law  is,  pending  the  completion  of  the  railroad,  not  en- 
forced. Without  extraordinary  action,  its  enforcement  would 
be  impossible,  for  Mormon  juries  will  give  no  verdict  antag- 
onistic to  their  Church ;  but  it  is  not  only  in  this  matter  that 
the  Mormons  have  been  offenders.  They  have  sinned  also 
against  the  land-laws  of  America.  The  Church,  Brigham, 
Kimball,  all  are  landholders  on  a  scale  not  contemplated  by 
the  "Homestead"  laws  —  unless  to  be  forbidden;  doubly, 
therefore,  are  the  Mormons  at  the  mercy  of  the  Federal  Con- 


Utah.  12'J 

gross.  There  is  a  loop-hole  open  in  the  matter  of  polygamy 
— that  adopted  by  the  New  York  Communists,  when  they 
chose  each  a  woman  to  be  his  legal  wife,  and  so  put  themselves 
without  the  reach  of  law.  This  method  of  escape,  I  have 
been  assured  by  Mormon  elders,  is  one  that  nothing  could 
force  them  to  adopt.  Rather  than  indirectly  destroy  their 
Church  by  any  such  weak  compliance,  they  would  again  re- 
nounce their  homes,  and  make  their  painful  way  across  the 
wilderness  to  some  new  Deseret. 

It  is  not  likely  that  New  England  interference  will  hinge 
upon  plurality.  A  "  difficulty "  can  easily  be  made  to  arise 
upon  the  land  question,  and  no  breach  of  the  principle  of  tol- 
eration will,  on  the  surface  at  least,  be  visible.  No  surveys 
have  been  held  in  the  Territory  since  1857,  no  lands  within 
the  territorial  limits  have  been  sold  by  the  Federal  land-office. 
Not  only  have  the  limitations  of  the  "  Homestead  "  and  "  Pre- 
emption" laws  been  disregarded,  but  Salt  Lake  City,  with  its 
palace,  its  theatre,  and  hotels,  is  built  upon  the  public  lands 
of  the  United  States.  On  the  other  hand,  Mexican  titles  are 
respected  in  Arizona  and  New  Mexico ;  and  as  Utah  was 
Mexican  soil  when,  before  the  treaty  of  Gaudalupe  Hidalgo, 
the  Mormons  settled  on  its  wastes,  it  seems  hard  that  their 
claims  should  not  be  equally  respected. 

After  all,  the  theory  of  Spanish  authority  was  a  ridiculous 
fiction.  The  Mormons  were  the  first  occupants  of  the  coun- 
try which  now  forms  the  Territories  of  Utah  and  Colorado, 
and  the  State  of  Nevada,  and  the  Mormons  were  thus  annexed 
to  the  United  States  without  being  in  the  least  degi'ee  consult- 
ed. It  is  true  that  they  might  be  said  to  have  occupied  the 
country  as  American  citizens,  and  so  to  have  carried  Amer- 
ican sovereignty  with  them  into  the  wilderness ;  but  this, 
again,  is  a  European,  not  an  American  theory.  American  cit- 
izens are  such,  not  as  men  born  upon  a  certain  soil,  but  as 
being  citizens  of  a  State  of  the  Union  or  an  organized  Terri- 
tory ;  and  though  the  Mormons  may  be  said  to  have  accepted 
their  position  as  citizens  of  the  Territory  of  Utah,  still  they 
did  so  on  the  understanding  that  it  should  continue  a  Mor- 
mon country,  where  Gentiles  should,  at  the  most,  be  barely 
tolerated. 

We  need  not  go  further  into  the  mazes  of  public  law,  or  of 

F2 


130  Greater  Britain. 

ex  post  facto  American  enactments.  The  Mormons  them- 
selves admit  that  the  letter  of  the  law  is  against  them;  but 
say  that  while  it  is  claimed  that  Boston  and  Philadelphia  may 
fitly  legislate  for  the  Mormons  three  thousand  miles  away, 
because  Utah  is  a  Territory,  not  a  State,  men  forget  that  it  is 
Boston  and  Philadelphia  themselves  who  force  Utah  to  re- 
main a  Territory,  although  they  admitted  the  less  populous 
Nebraska,  Nevada,  and  Oregon  to  their  rights  as  States. 

If,  wholly  excluding  morals  from  the  calculation,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  upon  the  points  of  the  law,  there  can  be  as  little 
upon  the  military  question.  Of  the  fifteen  hundred  miles  of 
waterless  tract  or  desert  that  we  crossed,  seven  hundred  have 
been  annihilated:  1869  may  see  the  railroad  track  in  the 
streets  of  Salt  Lake  City.  This  not  only  settles  the  military 
question,  but  is  meant  to  do  so.  When  men  lay  four  miles  of 
a  railroad  in  a  day,  and  average  two  miles  a  day  for  a  whole 
year,  when  a  Government  bribes  high  enough  to  secure  so 
startling  a  rate  of  progress,  there  is  something  moi'e  than 
commerce  or  settlement  in  the  wind.  The  Pacific  Railroad  is 
not  merely  meant  to  be  the  shortest  line  from  New  York  to 
San  Francisco,  but  it  is  meant  to  put  down  Mormonism. 

If  the  Federal  Government  decides  to  attack  these  peace- 
able citizens  of  a  Territory  that  should  long  since  have  been 
a  State,  they  certainly  will  not  fight,  and  they  no  less  surely 
will  not  disperse.  Polynesia  or  Mexico  is  their  goal;  and  in 
the  Marquesas  or  in  Sonora  they  may,  perhaps,  for  a  few 
years  at  least,  be  let  alone,  again  to  prove  the  forerunners  of 
English  civilization — planters  of  Saxon  institutions  and  the 
English  tongue,  once  more  to  perform  their  mission,  as  they 
performed  it  in  Missouri  and  in  Utah. 

When  we  tnrn  from  the  simple  legal  question,  and  the  still 
more  simple  military  one,  to  the  moral  point  involved  in  the 
forcible  suppression  of  plural  marriage  in  one  State  by  the 
force  of  all  the  others,  Ave  find  the  consideration  of  the  matter 
confused  by  the  apparent  analogy  between  the  so-called  cru- 
sade against  slavery  and  the  proposed  crusade  against  polyg- 
amy. There  is  no  real  resemblance  between  the  cases.  In 
the  strictest  sense,  there  was  no  more  a  crusade  against 
slavery  than  thei'e  is  a  crusade  against  snakes  on  the  part  of  a 
man  who  strikes  one  that  bit  him.     The  purest  republicans 


Utah.  131 

have  never  pretended  that  the  abolition  of  slavery  was  the 
justification  of  the  war.  The  South  rose  in  rebellion,  and,  in 
rising,  gave  New  England  an  opportunity  for  the  destruction 
in  America  of  an  institution  at  variance  with  the  republican 
form  of  government,  and  aggressive  in  its  tendencies.  So  far 
is  polygamy  from  being  opposed  in  spirit  to  democracy,  that 
it  is  impossible  here  in  Salt  Lake  City  not  to  see  that  it  is 
the  most  levelling  of  all  social  institutions — Mormonism  the 
most  democratic  of  religions.  A  rich  man  in  New  York 
leaves  his  sons  large  property,  and  founds  a  family ;  a  rich 
Mormon  leaves  his  twenty  or  thirty  sons  each  a  miserable 
fraction  of  his  money,  and  each  son  must  trudge  out  into  the 
world  and  toil  for  himself.  Brigham's  sons — those  of  them 
who  are  not  gratuitously  employed  in  hard  service  for  the 
Church  in  foreign  parts — are  cattle-drivers,  small  farmers, 
ranchmen.  One  of  them  was  the  only  poorly-clad  boy  I  saw 
in  Salt  Lake  City.  A  system  of  polygamy,  in  which  all  the 
wives,  and  consequently  all  the  children,  are  equal  before  the 
law,  is  a  powerful  engine  of  democracy. 

The  general  moral  question  of  whether  Mormonism  is  to  be 
put  down  by  the  sword  because  the  Latter-day  Saints  differ 
in  certain  social  customs  from  other  Christians,  is  one  for  the 
preacher  and  the  casuist,  not  for  a  travelling  observer  of  En- 
glish-speaking countries  as  they  are.  Mormonism  comes  un- 
der my  observation  as  the  religious  and  social  system  of  the 
most  successful  of  all  pioneers  of  English  civilization.  From 
this  point  of  view  it  would  be  an  immediate  advantage  to  the 
world  that  they  should  be  driven  out  once  moi'e  into  the  wil- 
derness, again  to  found  an  England  in  Mexico,  in  Polynesia, 
or  on  Red  River.  It  may  be  an  immediate  gain  to  civiliza- 
tion, but  America  herself  was  founded  by  schismatics  upon  a 
basis  of  tolerance  to  all ;  and  there  are  still  to  be  found  Amer- 
icans who  think  it  would  be  the  severest  blow  that  has  been 
dealt  to  liberty  since  the  St.  Bartholomew,  were  she  to  lend 
her  enormous  power  to  systematic  persecution  at  the  cannon's 
mouth. 

The  question  of  where  to  draw  the  line  is  one  of  interest. 
Great  Britain  draws  it  at  black  faces,  and  would  hardly  tol- 
erate the  existence  among  her  white  subjects  in  London  of 
such  a  sect  as  that  of  the  Maharajas  of  Bombay.     "If  you 


jjm^^mis^m^^MMas^^^m^m^mKmB&^mBsmmiimmm 

:^fs*»?W  '••'  "'■:- ^Biiif^iB^fe'TH 

rat  / jev '  '  •'.'•-  -i'^Bk.  /*^SfigMaM 

-Itffly'                  '''''^Y-t  ^':'''^*Jfi8S^Bi 

wm$F 

-  -it  < 

SI' 


Utah.  133 

draw  the  line  at  black  faces,"  say  the  Mormons,  "  why  should 
you  not  let  the  Americans  draw  it  at  two  thousand  miles  from 
Washington  V" 

The  moral  question  can  not  be  dissociated  from  that  of 
Mormon  history.  The  Saints  marched  from  Missouri  and 
Illinois  into  no  man's  land,  intending  there  to  live  out  of  the 
reach  of  those  who  differed  from  them,  as  do  the  Russian  dis- 
senters transported  in  past  ages  to  the  provinces  of  Taurida 
and  Kherson.  It  is  by  no  fault  of  theirs,  they  say,  that  they 
are  citizens  of  the  United  States. 

There  is  in  the  Far  West  a  fast  increasing  party  who  would 
leave  people  to  be  polygnists,  polyandrists,  free-lovers,  Shak- 
ers, or  monogamists,  as  they  please ;  who  would  place  the  so- 
cial relations  as  they  have  placed  religion — out  of  the  reach  of 
the  law.  I  need  hardly  say  that  public  opinion  has  such  over- 
whelming force  in  America  that  it  is  probable  that  even  un- 
der a  system  of  perfect  toleration  by  law,  two  forms  of  the 
family  relation  would  never  be  found  existing  side  by  side. 
Polygnists  would  continue  to  migrate  to  Mormon-land,  free- 
lovers  to  New  York,  Shakers  to  New  England.  Some  will 
find  in  this  a  reason  for,  and  some  a  reason  against,  a  change. 
In  any  case,  a  crusade  against  Mormonism  will  hardly  draw 
sympathy  from  Nebraska,  from  Michigan,  from  Kansas. 

Many  are  found  who  say,  "  Leave  Mormonism  to  itself, 
and  it  will  die."  The  Pacific  Railroad  alone,  they  think,  will 
kill  it.  Those  Americans  who  know  Utah  best  are  not  of  this 
opinion.  Mormonism  is  no  superstition  of  the  past.  There 
is  huge  vitality  in  the  polygamic  Church.  Emerson  once 
spoke  to  me  of  Unitarianism,  Buddhism,  and  Mormonism  as 
three  religions  which,  right  or  wrong,  are  full  of  force.  "  The 
Mormons  only  need  to  be  persecxited,"  said  Elder  Frederick  to 
me,  "  to  become  as  powerful  as  the  Mohammedans."  It  is,  in- 
deed, more  than  doubtful  whether  polygamy  can  endure  side 
by  side  with  American  monogamy — it  is  certain  that  Mormon 
priestly  power  and  Mormon  mysteries  can  not,  in  the  long  run, 
withstand  the  presence  of  a  large  Gentile  population;  but  if 
Mormon  titles  to  land  are  respected,  and  if  great  mineral 
wealth  is  not  found  to  exist  in  Utah,  Mormonism  will  not  be  ex- 
posed to  any  much  larger  Gentile  intrusion  than  it  has  to  cope 
With  now.     Settlers  who  can  e;o  to  California  or  to  Colorado 


134  GllEATEli    Bkitaix. 

"pares"  will  hardly  fix  themselves  in  the  Ut:ih  desert.  The 
Mexican  table-lands  will  be  annexed  before  Gentile  immi- 
grants seriously  trouble  Bingham.  Gold  and  New  England 
are  the  most  dreaded  foes  of  Mormondom.  Nothing  can  save 
polygamy  if  lodes  and  placers  such  as  those  of  all  the  surround- 
ing States  arc  found  in  Utah  ;  nothing  can  save  it  if  the  New 
Englanders  determine  to  put  it  down. 

Were  Congress  to  enforce  the  homestead  laws  in  Utah, 
and  provide  for  the  presence  of  an  overwhelming  Gentile  pop- 
ulation, polygamy  would  not  only  die  of  itself,  but  drag  Mor- 
monism  down  in  its  fall.  Brigham  knows  more  completely 
than  we  can  the  necessity  of  isolation.  He  would  not  be 
likely  to  await  the  blow  which  increased  Gentile  immigration 
would  deal  to  his  power. 

If  New  England  decides  to  act,  the  table-lands  of  Mexico 
will  see  played  once  more  the  sad  comedy  of  Utah.  Again 
the  Mormons  will  march  into  Mexican  territory,  again  to  wake 
some  day,  and  find  it  American.  Theirs,  however,  will  once 
more  be  the  pride  of  having  proved  the  pioneers  of  that  En- 
glish civilization  which  is  destined  to  overspread  the  temper- 
ate world.  The  treaty  of  Guadalupe  Hidalgo  annexed  Utah 
to  the  United  States,  but  Brigham  Young  annexed  it  to  An- 
crlo-Saxondoiu. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

NAMELESS    ALPS. 


At  the  Post-office  in  Main  Street  I  gave  Mr.  Dixon  a  few 
last  messages  for  home — he  one  to  me  for  some  Egyptian 
friends  ;  and,  with  a  shake  and  a  wave,  Ave  parted,  to  meet  in 
London  after  between  us  completing  the  circuit  of  the  globe. 

This  time  again  I  was  not  alone :  an  Irish  miner  from 
Montana,  with  a  bottle  of  whisky,  a  revolver  and  pick,  shared 
the  back  seat  with  the  mail-bags.  Before  we  had  forded  the 
Jordan  he  had  sung  "  The  wearing  of  the  Green,"  and  told  me 
the  day  and  the  hour  at  which  the  republic  was  to  be  pro- 
claimed at  his  native  village  in  Galway.  Like  a  true  Irish- 
man of  the  South  or  West,  he  was  happy  only  when  he  could 


Nameless  Alps.  loo 

be  generous ;  and  so  much  joy  did  he  show  when  I  discover- 
ed that  the  cork  had  slipped  from  my  flask,  and  left  me  de- 
pendent on  him  for  my  escape  from  the  alkaline  poison,  that 
I  half  believed  he  had  drawn  it  himself  when  Ave  stopped  to 
change  horses  for  mules.  Certain  it  is  that  he  pressed  his 
whisky  so  fast  upon  me  and  the  various  drivers,  that  the  day 
we  most  needed  its  aid  there  was  none,  and  the  bottle  itself 
had  ended  its  career  by  serving  as  a  target  for  a  trial  of 
breech-loading  pistols. 

At  the  sixth  ranch  from  the  city,  which  stands  on  the 
shores  of  the  lake,  and  close  to  the  foot  of  the  mountains,  we 
found  Porter  Rockwell,  accredited  chief  of  the  Danites,  the 
"  Avenging  Angels "  of  Utah,  and  leader,  it  is  said,  of  the 
"White  Indians"  at  the  Mountain  Meadows  Massacre. 


rOKTER   KO(  KWELL. 


Since  1840  there  has  been  no  name  of  greater  terror  in  the 
West  than  Rockwell's;  but  in  1860  his  death  was  reported  in 
England,  and  the  career  of  the  great  Brother  of  Gideon  was 
ended,  as  we  thought.  I  Avas  told  in  Salt  Lake  City  that  he 
Avas  still  alive  and  Avell,  and  his  portrait  Avas  among  those  that 
I  got  from  Mr.  Ottinger;  but  I  am  not  convinced  that  the 
man  I  saw,  and  Avhose  picture  I  possess,  was  in  fact  the  Por- 
ter Rockwell  Avho  murdered  Stephenson  in  1842.     It  may  be 


136  Greater  Britain. 

convenient  to  have  two  or  three  men  to  pass  by  the  one  name', 
and  I  suspect  that  this  is  so  in  the  Rockwell  case. 

Under  the  name  of  Porter  Rockwell,  some  man  (or  men) 
lias  been  the  terror  of  Mississippi  Valley,  of  Plains  and  Pla- 
teau, for  thirty  years.  In  1841  Joe  Smith  prophesied  the 
death  of  Governor  Boggs,  of  Missouri,  within  six  months: 
within  that  time  he  was  shot  —  rumor  said,  by  Rockwell. 
When  the  Danite  was  publicly  charged  with  having  done  the 
deed  for  fifty  dollars  and  a  wagon-team,  he  swore  he'd  shoot 
any  man  who  said  he'd  shot  Boggs  for  gain;  "  but  if  I  am 
charged  with  shooting  him,  they'll  have  to  prove  it" — words 
that  looked  like  guilt.  In  1842  Stephenson  died  by  the  same 
hand,  it  is  believed.  Rockwell  was  known  to  be  the  working- 
chief  of  the  band  organized  in  1838  to  defend  the  First  Pres- 
idency by  any  means  whatever,  fair  or  foul,  known  at  various 
times  as  the  "  Big  Fan"  that  should  winnow  the  chaff  from 
the  wheat ;  the  "  Daughter  of  Zion,"  the  "  Destructives,"  the 
"Flying  Angels,"  the  "Brother  of  Gideon,"  the  "Destroy- 
ing Angels."  "Arise  and  thresh,  O  daughter  of  Zion,  for  I 
will  make  thy  horn  iron,  and  will  make  thy  hoofs  brass  ;  and 
thou  shall  beat  in  pieces  many  people ;  and  I  will  consecrate 
their  gain  unto  the  Lord,  and  their  substance  unto  the  lords  of 
the  whole  earth" — this  was  the  motto  of  the  band. 

Little  was  heard  of  the  Danites  from  the  time  that  the 
Mormons  were  driven  from  Illinois  and  Missouri  until  1852, 
when  murder  after  murder,  massacre  after  massacre,  occurred 
in  the  Grand  Plateau.  Bands  of  immigrants,  of  settlers  on 
their  road  to  California,  parties  of  United  States  officers,  es- 
caping Mormons,  were  attacked  by  "  Indians,"  and  found 
scalped  by  the  next  whites  who  came  upon  their  trail.  It  was 
rumored  in  the  Eastern  States  that  the  red  men  were  Mor- 
mons in  disguise,  following  the  tactics  of  the  Anti-renters  of 
New  York.  In  the  case  of  Almon  Babbitt,  the  "  Indians " 
were  proved  to  have  been  white. 

The  atrocities  culminated  in  the  Mountain  Meadows  Mas- 
sacre in  1857,  when  hundreds  of  men,  women,  and  children 
were  murdered  by  men  armed  and  clothed  as  Indians,  but 
sworn  to  by  some  Avho  escaped  as  being  whites.  Porter  Rock- 
well has  had  the  infamy  of  this  tremendous  slaughter  piled  on 
to  the  huQ-e  mass  of  his  earlier  deeds  of  blood — whether  right 


Nameless  Alps.  137 

ly  or  wrongly,  who  shall  say?  The  man  that  I  saw  was  the 
man  that  Captain  Burton  saw  in  1SG0.  His  death  was  solemn- 
ly recorded  in  the  autumn  of  that  year,  yet  of  the  identity  of 
the  person  I  saw  with  the  person  described  by  Captain  Burton 
there  can  be  no  question.  The  bald,  frowning  forehead,  the 
sinister  smile,  the  long  grizzly  curls  falling  upon  the  back,  the 
red  cheek,  the  coal  beard,  the  gray  eye,  are  not  to  be  mis- 
taken. Rockwell  or  not,  he  is  a  man  capable  of  any  deed.  I 
had  his  photograph  in  my  pocket,  and  wanted  to  get  him  to 
sign  it ;  but  when,  in  awe  of  his  glittering  bowie  and  of  his 
fame,  I  asked,  by  way  of  caution,  the  ranchman — a  new-come 
Paddy — whether  Rockwell  could  write,  the  fellow  told  me 
with  many  an  oath  that  "  the  boss  "  was  as  innocent  of  letters 
as  a  babe.  "  As  for  writin',"  he  said,  "  cuss  me  if  he's  on  it. 
You  bet  he's  not — you  bet." 

Not  far  beyond  Rockwell's,  we  drove  close  to  the  bench- 
land  ;  and  I  was  able  to  stop  for  a  moment  and  examine  the 
rocks.  From  the  veranda  of  the  Mormon  poet  Naisbitt's 
house  in  Salt  Lake  City,  I  had  remarked  a  double  line  of  ter- 
race running  on  one  even  level  round  the  whole  of  the  great 
valley  to  the  south,  cut  by  nature  along  the  base  alike  of  the 
Oquirrh  and  the  Wasatch. 

I  had  thought  it  possible  that  the  terrace  was  the  result  of 
the  varying  hardness  of  the  strata ;  but,  near  Black  Rock,  on 
the  overland  track,  I  discovered  that  where  the  terrace  lines 
have  crossed  the  mountain  precipices,  they  are  continued 
merely  by  deep  stains  upon  the  rocks.  The  inference  is  that 
within  extremely  recent,  if  not  historic  times,  the  water  has 
stood  at  these  levels  from  two  to  three  hundred  feet  above 
the  present  Great  Salt  Lake  City,  itself  4300  feet  above  the 
sea.  Three  days'  journey  farther  west,  on  the  Reese's  River 
Range,  I  detected  similar  stains.  Was  the  whole  basin  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains — here  more  than  a  thousand  miles 
across — once  filled  with  a  huge  sea,  of  which  the  two  Sierras 
were  the  shores,  and  the  Wasatch,  Goshoot,  Waroja,  Toi 
Abbe,  Humboldt,  Washoe,  and  a  hundred  other  ranges,  the 
rocks  and  isles  ?  The  Great  Salt  Lake  is  but  the  largest  of 
many  such.  I  saw  one  on  Mirage  Plains  that  is  Salter  than 
its  greater  fellow.  Carson  Sink  is  evidently  the  bed  of  a  small- 
er, bitter  lake  ;  and  there  are  salt  pools  in  dozens  scattered 


.* _ 


Eg  &    ■  a    la 


M  #*S»5l ..    km  -I 

,  ,?-jM *sf7^" 3 


Nameless  Alps.  139 

through  Ruby  and  Smoky  valleys.  The  Great  Salt  Lake  it- 
self is  sinking  year  by  year,  and  the  sage-brush  is  gaining 
upon  the  alkali  desert  throughout  the  Grand  Plateau.  All 
these  signs  point  to  the  rapid  drying-up  of  a  great  sea,  owing 
to  an  alteration  of  climatic  conditions. 

In  the  Odd  Fellows'  Library  at  San  Francisco  I  found  a 
map  of  North  America,  signed  "  John  Harvis,  A.M.,"  and 
dated  "  1G05,"  which  shows  a  great  lake  in  the  country  now 
comprised  in  the  Territories  of  Utah  and  Dacotah,  with  a 
width  of  fifteen  degrees,  and  is  named  "Thongo  or  Thoya." 
It  is  not  likely  that  this  inland  sea  is  a  mere  exaggeration  of 
the  present  Great  Salt  Lake,  because  the  views  of  that  sheet 
of  water  are  everywhere  limited  by  islands  in  such  a  way  as 
to  give  to  the  eye  the  effect  of  exceeding  narrowness.  It  is 
possible  that  the  Jesuit  fathers,  and  other  Spanish  travellers 
from  California,  may  have  looked  from  the  Utah  Mountains 
on  the  dwindling  remnant  of  a  great  inland  sea. 

On  we  jogged  and  jolted,  till  we  lost  sight  of  the  Ameri- 
can Dead  Sea  and  of  its  lovely  valley,  and  got  into  a  canon 
floored  with  huge  boulders  and  slabs  of  roughened  rock, 
where  I  expected  each  minute  to  undergo  the  fate  of  that  In- 
dian traveller  who  received  such  a  jolt  that  he  bit  off  the  tip 
of  his  own  tongue,  or  of  Horace  Greeley,  whose  head  was 
bumped,  it  is  said,  through  the  roof  of  his  conveyance.  Here, 
as  upon  the  eastern  side  the  Wasatch,  the  track  was  marked 
by  never-ending  lines  of  skeletons  of  mules  and  oxen. 

On  the  first  evening  from  Salt  Lake,  Ave  escaped  once  more 
from  man  at  Stockton,  a  Gentile  mining  settlement  in  Rush 
Valley,  too  small  to  be  called  a  village,  though  possessed  of  a 
municipality,  and  claiming  the  title  of  "  city."  By  night  we 
crossed  by  Reynolds's  Pass  the  Parolom,  or  Cedar  Range,  in 
a  two-horse  "  jerky,"  to  which  we  had  been  shifted  for  speed 
and  safety.  Upon  the  heights  the  frost  was  bitter ;  and  when 
Ave  stopped  at  3  a.m.  for  "supper,"  in  which  breakfast  Avas 
combined,  Ave  crawled  into  the  stable  like  flies  in  autumn, 
half  killed  by  the  sudden  chill.  My  miner  spoke  but  once  all 
night.  "It's  right  cold,"  he  said  ;  but  fifty  times  at  least  he 
sang  "  Wearing  of  the  Green."     It  Avas  his  only  tune. 

Soon  after  light  Ave  passed  the  spot  Avhere  Captain  Gun- 
nison, of  the  Federal  Engineers,  who  had  been  in  1853  the 


140  Greater  Britain. 

first  explorer  of  the  Smoky  Hill  route,  was  killed  "  by  the 
Ute  Indians."  Gunnison  was  an  old  enemy  of  the  Mormons, 
and  the  spot  is  ominously  near  to  Rockwell's  home.  Here  we 
came  out  once  more  into  the  alkali,  and  our  troubles  from 
dust  began.  For  hours  we  were  in  a  desert  white  as  snow ;  but 
for  reward  Ave  gained  a  glorious  view  of  the  Goshoot  Range 
which  we  crossed  by  night,  climbing  silently  on  foot  for  hours 
in  the  moonlight.     The  walking  saved  us  from  the  cold. 

The  third  day — a  Sunday  morning — we  were  at  the  foot  of 
the  Waroja  Mountains,  with  Egan  Canon  for  our  pass,  hewn 
by  nature  through  the  living  rock.  You  dare  swear  you  see 
the  chisel-marks  upon  the  stone.  A  gold-mill  had  years  ago 
been  erected  here,  and  failed.  The  heavy  machinery  was  lost 
upon  the  road  ;  but  the  four  stone  Avails  contained  betAveen 
them  the  Avreck  of  the  lighter  "  plant." 

As  we  jolted  and  journeyed  on  across  the  succeeding  plain, 
avc  spied  in  the  far  distance  a  group  of  black  dots  upon  the 
alkali.  Man  seems  very  small  in  the  infinite  expanse  of  the 
Grand  Plateau — the  roof,  as  it  were,  of  the  world.  At  the 
end  of  an  hour  Ave  Avere  upon  them — a  company  of  "  overland- 
ers  "  "  tracking  "  across  the  continent  Avith  mules.  First  came 
two  mounted  men,  Avell  armed  with  Deringers  in  the  belt,  and 
Ballard  breech-loaders  on  the  thigh,  prepared  for  ambush — 
ready  for  action  against  elk  or  red-skin.  About  fifty  yards 
behind  these  scoAvling  fellows  came  the  main  band  of  beard- 
ed, red-shirted  diggers,  in  huge  boots  and  felt  hats,  each  man 
riding  one  mule,  and  driving  another  laden  with  packs  and 
buckets.  As  Ave  came  up,  the  main  body  halted,  and  an  in- 
terchange of  compliments  began.  "  Say,  mister,  thet's  a  slim 
horse  of  yourn."  "  Guess  not — guess  he's  all  sorts  of  a  horse, 
he  air.  And  how  far  might  it  be  to  the  State  of  Varmount  ?" 
"  Wall,  guess  the  boys  doAvn  to  hum  will  be  kinder  joyed  to 
see  us,  hoAvsomever  that  may  be."  Just  at  this  moment  a  rat- 
tlesnake Avas  spied,  and  every  revolver  discharged  with  a  shout, 
all  hailing  the  successful  shot  Avith  a  "  Bully  for  you ;  thet 
hit  him  whar  he  lives."     And  on,  Avithout  more  ado,  AveAvent. 

Even  the  roughest  of  these  overlanders  has  in  him  some- 
thing more  than  roughness.  As  far  as  appearance  goes,  every 
Avoman  of  the  Far  "West  is  a  duchess,  each  man  a  Coriolanus. 
The  royal  gait,  the  imperial  glance  and  froAvn,  belong  to  every 


Nameless  Alps.  141 

ranchman  in  Nevada.  Every  fellow  that  you  meet  upon  the 
track  near  Stockton  or  Austin  City  walks  as  though  he  were 
defying  lightning,  yet  this  without  silly  strut  or  braggadocio. 
Nothing  can  be  more  complete  than  the  ranchman's  self-com- 
mand, save  in  the  one  point  of  oaths ;  the  strongest,  freshest, 
however,  of  their  moral  features  is  a  grand  enthusiasm,  amount- 
ing sometimes  to  insanity.  As  for  their  oaths,  they  tell  you 
it  is  nothing  unless  the  air  is  "  blue  with  cusses."  At  one  of 
the  ranches  where  there  was  a  woman,  she  said  quietly  to  me, 
in  the  middle  of  an  awful  burst  of  swearing,  "  Guess  Bill 
swears  steep  ;"  to  which  I  replied,  "  Guess  so  " — the  only  al- 
lusion I  ever  heard  or  hazarded  to  Western  swearing. 

Leaving  to  our  north  a  snowy  range — nameless  here,  but 
marked  on  European  maps  as  the  East  Humboldt — we  reach- 
ed the  foot  of  the  Ruby  Valley  Mountains  on  the  Sunday  after- 
noon in  glowing  sunshine,  and  crossed  them  in  a  snow-storm. 
In  the  night  we  journeyed  up  and  down  the  Diamond  or 
Quartz  Range,  and  morning  found  us  at  the  foot  of  the  Pond 
Chain.  At  the  ranch.-1— where,  in  the  absence  of  elk,  Ave  ate 
"  bacon,"  and  dreamed  we  breakfasted — I  chatted  with  an 
agent  of  the  Mail  Company  on  the  position  of  the  ranchman, 
divisible,  as  he  told  me,  into  "  cooks  and  hostlers."  The  cooks, 
my  experience  had  taught  me,  were  the  aptest  scholars,  the 
greatest  politicians  ;  the  hostlers  men  of  Avar,  and  completest 
masters  of  the  art  of  Western  swearing.  The  cooks  had  a 
New  England  cut ;  the  hostlers,  like  Southerners,  Avore  their 
hair  all  down  their  backs.  I  begged  an  explanation  of  the 
reason  for  the  marked  distinction.  "  They  are  picked,"  he 
said, "  from  different  classes.  When  a  boy  comes  to  me  and 
asks  for  something  to  do,  I  give  him  a  look,  and  see  what  kind 
of  stuff  he's  made  of.  If  he's  a  gay  duck  out  for  a  six-weeks' 
spree,  I  send  him  down  here,  or  to  Bitter  Wells  ;  but  if  he's  a 
clerk  or  a  poet,  or  any  such  sorter  fool  as  that,  Avhy  then  I  set 
him  cooking  ;  and  plaguy  good  cooks  they  make,  as  you  must 
find." 

The  drivers  on  this  portion  of  the  route  are  as  odd  felloAVS 
as  are  the  ranchmen.  Wearing  huge  jack-boots,  flannel  shirts 
tucked  into  their  troAvsers,  but  no  coat  or  vest,  and  hats  with 
enormous  brims,  they  haA'e  their  hair  long,  and  their  beards 
untrimmed.     Their  oaths,  I  need  hardly  say,  are  fearful.     At 


142  Greater  Britain. 

night  they  wrap  themselves  in  an  enormous  cloak,  drink  as 
much  whisky  as  their  passengers  can  spare  them,  crack  their 
whips,  and  yell  strange  yells.  They  are  quarrelsome  and  over- 
bearing, honest  probably,  but  eccentric  in  their  ways  of  show- 
ing it.  They  belong  chiefly  to  the  mixed  Irish  and  German 
race,  and  have  all  been  in  Australia  during  the  gold-rush,  and 
in  California  before  deep  sinking  replaced  the  surface  diggings. 
They  Avill  tell  you  how  they  often  washed  out  and  gambled 
away  a  thousand  ounces  in  a  month,  living  like  Roman  em- 
perors, then  started  in  digging-life  again  upon  the  charity  of 
their  wealthier  friends.  They  hate  men  dressed  in  "  biled 
shirts "  or  in  "  store-clothes,"  and  show  their  aversions  in 
strange  ways.  I  had  no  objection  myself  to  build  fires  and 
fetch  wood ;  but  I  drew  the  line  at  going  into  the  sage-brush 
to  catch  the  mules,  that  not  being  a  business  which  I  felt  com- 
petent to  undertake.  The  season  was  advanced,  the  snows  had 
not  yet  reached  the  valleys,  which  were  parched  by  the  drought 
of  all  the  summer,  feed  for  the  mules  was  scarce,  and  they 
wandered  a  long  way.  Time  after  time  we  would  drive  into 
a  station,  the  driver  saying,  Avith  strange  oaths,  "  Guess  them 
mules  is  clared  out  from  this  here  ranch  ;  guess  they  is  into 
this  sage-brush ;"  and  it  would  be  an  hour  before  the  mules 
would  be  discovered  feeding  in  some  forgotten  valley.  Mean- 
while the  r"  er  and  myself  would  have  revolver  practice  at 
the  skeletoi  j  and  telegraph-posts  when  sage  fowl  failed  us, 
and  rattlesnakes  grew  scarce. 

After  all,  it  is  easy  to  speak  of  the  eccentricities  of  dress 
and  manner  displayed  by  Western  men,  but  Eastei'n  men  and 
Europeans  upon  the  Plateau  arc  not  the  prim  creatures  of 
Fifth  Avenue  or  Pall  Mall.  From  San  Francisco  I  sent  home 
an  excellent  photograph  of  myself  in  the  clothes  in  wdiich  I 
had  crossed  the  Plateau,  those  being  the  only  ones  I  had  to 
wear  till  my  baggage  came  round  from  Panama.  The  result 
was  that  my  oldest  friends  failed  to  recognize  the  portrait. 
At  the  foot  I  had  written  "  A  Border  Ruffian  :"  they  believed 
not  the  likeness,  but  the  legend. 

The  difficulties  of  dress  upon  these  mountain  ranges  are 
great  indeed.  To  sit  one  night  exposed  to  keen  frost  and  bit- 
ing wind,  and  the  next  day  to  toil  for  hours  up  a  mountain-side 
beneath  a  blazing  sun  are  very  opposite  conditions.     I  found 


Nameless  Alps.  143 

my  dress  no  bad  one.  At  night  I  wore  a  Canadian  fox-fur 
oap,  Mormon  'coon-skin  gloves,  two  coats,  and  the  whole  of 
my  light  silk  shirts.  By  day  I  took  off  the  coats,  the  gloves 
and  cap,  and  walked  in  my  shirts,  adding  but  a  Panama  hat  to 
my  "  fit-out." 

As  we  began  the  ascent  to  the  Pond  River  Range,  Ave 
caught  up  a  bullock-train,  which  there  was  not  room  to  pass. 
The  miner  and  myself  turned  out  from  the  jerky,  and  for  hours 
climbed  alongside  the  wagons.  I  was  struck  by  the  freema- 
sonry of  this  mountain  travel :  Bryant,  the  miner,  had  come  to 
the  end  of  his  "  solace,"  as  the  most  famed  chewing-tobacco  in 
these  parts  is  called.  Going  up  to  the  nearest  teamster,  he 
asked  for  some,  and  was  at  once  presented  with  a  huge  cake 
— enough,  I  should  have  thought,  to  have  lasted  a  Channel  pi- 
lot for  ten  years. 

The  climb  was  long  enough  to  give  me  a  deep  insight  into 
the  inner  mysteries  of  bullock-driving.  Each  of  the  great  two- 
storied  Calif ornian  wagons  was  drawn  by  twelve  stout  oxen 
still,  the  pace  was  not  a  mile  an  hour,  accomplished,  as  it  seem- 
ed to  me,  not  so  much  by  the  aid  as  in  spite  of  tremendous 
flogging.  Each  teamster  carried  a  .short-handled  whip  with  a 
twelve-foot  leathern  lash,  which  was  wielded  with  two  hands, 
and,  after  many  a  whirl,  brought  down  along  theAvhole  length 
of  the  back  of  each  bullock  of  the  team  in  turn,  the  stroke  be- 
ing accompanied  by  a  shout  of  the  bullock's  name,  and  follow- 
ed, as  it  was  preceded,  by  a  string  of  the  most  explosive  oaths. 
The  favorite  names  for  bullocks  were  those  of  noted  public 
characters  and  of  Mormon  elders,  and  cries  were  frequent  of 
"  Ho,  Brigham !"  «  Ho,  Joseph  !"  "  Ho,  Grant !"  the  blow 
falling  with  the  accented  syllable.  The  London  Society  for 
the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Animals  would  find  at  Pond 
River  Range  an  excellent  opening  for  a  mission.  The  ap- 
pointed officer  should  be  supplied  with  two  Deringers  and  a 
well-filled  whisky-barrel. 

Through  a  gap  in  the  mountain  crest  wc  sighted  the  West 
Humboldt  Range,  across  an  open  country  dotted  here  and 
there  with  stunted  cedar,  and,  crossing  Smoky  Valley,  wc 
plunged  into  a  deep  pass  in  the  Toi  Abbe  Range,  and  reached 
Austin — a  mining-town  of  importance,  rising  two  years  old — 
in  the  afternoon  of  the  fourth  day  from  Salt  Lake  City. 


144  Greater  Britain. 

After  dining  at  an  Italian  digger's  restaurant  with  an 
amount  of  luxury  that  recalled  our  feasts  at  Salt  Lake  City,  I 
started  on  a  stroll,  in  which  I  was  stopped  at  once  by  a  shout 
from  an  open  bar-room  of  "  Say  !  mister  !"  Pulling  up  sharp- 
ly, I  was  surrounded  by  an  eager  crowd,  asking  from  all  sides 
the  one  question :  "  Might  you  be  Professor  Muller  ?"  Al- 
though nattered  to  find  that  I  looked  less  disreputable  and 
ruffianly  than  I  felt,  I  nevertheless  explained  as  best  I  could 
that  I  was  no  professor — only  to  be  assured  that  if  I  was  any 
professor  at  all,  Muller  or  other,  1  should  do  just  as  well:  a 
mule  was  ready  for  me  to  ride  to  the  mine,  and  "  Jest  kinder 
fix  us  up  about  this  new  lode."  If  my  new-found  friends  had 
not  carried  an  overwhelming  force  of  pistols,  I  might  have 
gone  to  the  mine  as  Professor  Muller,  and  given  my  opinion 
for  what  it  was  worth  ;  as  it  was,  I  escaped  only  by  "  liquor- 
ing up  "  over  the  error.  Cases  of  mistaken  identity  are  not 
always  so  pleasant  in  Austin.  They  told  me  that,  a  few  weeks 
before,  a  man  riding  down  the  street  heard  a  shot,  saw  his  hat 
fall  into  the  mud,  and,  picking  it  up,  found  a  small  round  hole 
on  each  side.  Looking  up,  he  saw  a  tall  miner,  revolver  smok- 
ing in  hand,  who  smiled  grimly,  and  said  :  "  Guess  that's  my 
muel."  Having  politely  explained  when  and  where  the  mule 
was  bought,  the  miner  professed  himself  satisfied  with  a 
"  Guess  I  was  wrong — let's  liquor." 

In  the  course  of  my  walk  through  Austin,  I  came  upon  a 
row  of  neat  huts,  each  with  a  board,  on  which  was  painted, 
"Sang  Sing,  washing  and  ironing,"  or  "Mangling  by  Ah 
Low."  A  few  paces  farther  on  was  a  shop  painted  red,  but 
adorned  with  cabalistic  scrawls  in  black  ink  ;  and  farther  still 
was  a  tiny  joss-house.  Yellow  men  in  spotless  clothes  of 
dark-green  and  blue  were  busy  at  buying  and  selling,  at  cook- 
ing and  washing.  Some,  at  a  short  trot,  were  carrying  burdens 
p.t  the  ends  of  a  long  bamboo  pole.  All  Avere  quiet,  quick,  or- 
derly, and  clean.  I  had  at  last  come  thoroughly  among  the 
Chinese  people,  not  to  part  with  them  again  till  I  left  Geelong, 
or  even  Suez. 

Returning  to  the  room  where  I  had  dined,  I  parted  with 
Pat  Bryant,  quitting  him,  in  Western  fashion,  after  a  good 
"  trade  "  or  "  swop."  He  had  taken  a  fancy  to  the  bigger  of 
my  two  revolvers.     He  was  going  to  breed  cattle  in  Oregon, 


Nameless  Alps.  145 

lie  told  me,  and  thought  it  might  be  useful  for  shooting  his 
■wildest  beasts  by  riding  in  the  Indian  manner,  side  by  side 
with  them,  and  shooting  at  the  heart.  I  answered  by  guessing 
that  I  "  was  on  the  sell;"  and  traded  the  weapon  against  one 
of  his  that  matched  my  smaller  tool.  When  I  reached  Vir- 
ginia City,  I  inquired  prices,  and  was  almost  disappointed  to 
find  that  I  had  not  been  cheated  in  the  "  trade." 

A  few  minutes  after  leaving  the  "  hotel "  at  Austin,  and 
calling  at  the  Post-office  for  the  mails,  I  again  found  myself  in 
the  desert — indeed,  Austin  itself  can  hardly  be  styled  oasis: 
it  may  have  gold,  but  it  has  no  green  thing  within  its  limits. 
It  is  in  canons  and  on  plains  like  these,  with  the  skeletons  of 
oxen  every  few  yards  along  the  track,  that  one  comes  to  com- 
prehend the  full  significance  of  the  terrible  entry  in  the  army 
route-books — "  No  grass,  no  water." 

Descending  a  succession  of  tremendous  "grades,"  as  in- 
clines upon  roads  and  railroads  are  called  out  West,  we  came 
on  to  the  lava-covered  plain  of  Reese's  River  Valley,  a  wall  of 
snowy  mountain  rising  grandly  in  our  front.  Close  to  the 
stream  were  a  ranch  or  two,  and  a  double  camp  of  miners  and 
of  a  company  of  Federal  troops.  The  diggers  were  playing 
with  their  glistening  knives  as  diggers  only  can ;  the  soldiers 
— their  huge  sombreros  worn  loosely  on  one  side — were  loung- 
ing idly  in  the  sun. 

Within  an  hour  we  were  again  in  snow  and  ice  upon  the 
summit  of  another  nameless  range. 

This  evening,  after  five  sleepless  nights,  I  felt  most  terribly 
the  peculiar  form  of  fatigue  that  Ave  had  experienced  after  six 
days  and  nights  upon  the  Plains.  Again  the  brain  seemed 
divided  into  two  parts,  thinking  independently,  and  one  side 
putting  questions  while  the  other  answered  them ;  but  this 
time  there  was  also  a  sort  of  half-insanity,  a  not  altogether 
disagreeable  wandering  of  the  mind,  a  replacing  of  the  actual 
by  an  imagined  ideal  scene. 

On  and  on  we  journeyed,  avoiding  the  Shoshone  and  West 
Humboldt  Mountains,  but  picking  our  way  along  the  most 
fearful  ledges  that  it  has  been  my  fate  to  cross,  and  travers- 
ing from  end  to  end  the  dreadful  Mirage  Plains.  At  night- 
fall Ave  sighted* Mount  Davidson  and  the  Washoe  Range;  at 
3  a.  ii.  I  was  in  bed  once  more — in  Virginia  City. 

G 


14G  Greater  Britain. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

VIRGINIA    CITY. 

"  Guess  the  governor's  consid'rablc  skeert." 

"  You  bet,  he's  mad." 

My  sitting  down  to  breakfast  at  the  same  small  table  seem- 
ed to  end  the  talk ;  but  I  had  not  been  out  West  for  nothing, 
so  explaining  that  I  was  only  four  hours  in  Virginia  City,  I 
inquired  what  had  occurred  to  fill  the  Governor  of  Nevada 
with  vexation  and  alarm. 

"  D'you  tell  now  !  only  four  hours  in  this  gTeat  young  city. 
Wall,  guess  it's  a  bully  business.  You  see,  some  time  back 
the  governor  pardoned  a  road  agent  after  the  citizens  had 
voted  him  a  rope.  Yes,  sir !  But  that  ain't  all :  yesterday, 
cuss  me  if  he  didn't  refuse  ter  pardon  one  of  the  boys  who 
had  jess  shot  another  in  play  like.  Guess  he  thinks  hisseli 
some  pumpkins."  I  duly  expressed  my  horror,  and  my  in- 
formant went  on  :  "  Wall,  guess  the  citizens  paid  him  off  pur- 
ty  slick.  They  jess  sent  him  a  short,  thick  bit  of  rope,  with  a 
label,  '  For  his  Excellency.'  You  bet  ef  he  ain't  mad — you 
bet !     Pass  us  those  molasses,  mister." 

I  was  not  disappointed:  I  had  not  come  to  Nevada  for 
nothing.  To  see  Virginia  City  and  Carson,  since  I  first  heard 
their  fame  in  New  York,  had  been  with  me  a  passion,  but  the 
deed  thus  told  me  in  the  dining-room  of  the  "  Empire  "  Hotel 
was  worthy  a  place  in  the  annals  of  "  Washoe."  Under  its 
former  name,  the  chief  town  of  Nevada  was  ranked  not  only 
the  highest,  but  the  "  cussedest "  town  in  the  States,  its  citi- 
zens expecting  a  "  dead  man  for  breakfast  "  every  day,  and  its 
streets  ranging  from  seven  to  eight  thousand  feet  above  the 
sea.  Its  twofold  fame  is  leaving  it :  the  Coloradan  villages  of 
North  Empire  and  Black  Hawk  are  nine  or  ten  thousand  feet 
above  sea-level,  and  Austin  and  Virginia  City  in  Montana  beat 
it  in  playful  pistolling  and  vice.  Nevertheless,  in  the  point  of 
"  pure  cussedness  "  old  Washoe  still  stands  well,  as  my  first  in- 


Virginia  City.  147 

traduction  to  its  ways  will  show.  All  the  talk  of  Nevada  ref- 
ormation applies  only  to  the  surface  signs  :  when  a  miner  tells 
you  that  Washoe  is  turning  pious,  and  that  he  intends  short- 
ly to  "  varmose,"  he  means  that,  unlike  Austin,  which  is  still 
in  its  first  state  of  mule-stealing  and  monte,  Virginia  City  has 
passed  through  the  second  period — that  of  ''Vigilance  Com- 
mittees "  and  "  historic  trees  " — and  is  entering  the  third,  the 
stage  of  churches  and  "  city  officers,"  or  police. 

The  population  is  still  a  shifting  one.  A  by-law  of  the 
municipality  tells  us  that  the  "  permanent  population  "  consists 
of  those  who  reside  more  than  a  month  within  the  city.  At 
this  moment  the  miners  are  pouring  into  Washoe  from  north, 
and  south,  and  east,  from  Montana,  from  Arizona,  and  from 
Utah,  coming  to  the  gayeties  of  the  largest  mining-city  to 
spend  their  money  during  the  fierce,  short  winter.  When  I 
saw  Virginia  City,  it  was  worse  than  Austin. 

Every  other  house  is  a  restaurant,  a  drinking-shop,  a  gam- 
ing-hell,  or  worse.  With  no  one  to  make  beds,  to  mend 
clothes,  to  cook  food — with  no  house,  no  home — men  are  al- 
most certain  to  drink  and  gamble.  The  Washoe  bar-rooms 
are  the  most  brilliant  in  the  States  :  as  Ave  drove  in  from  Aus- 
tin at  2  a.m.,  there  was  blaze  enough  for  us  to  see  from  the 
frozen  street  the  portraits  of  Lola  Montez,  Ada  Menken,  Hee- 
nan,  and  the  other  California!!  celebrities  with  which  the  bar- 
rooms were  adorned. 

Although  "  petticoats,"  even  Chinese,  are  scarce,  dancing 
was  going  on  in  every  house ;  but  there  is  a  rule  in  miners' 
balls  that  prevents  all  difficulties  arising  from  an  oversupply  of 
men :  every  one  who  has  a  patch  on  the  rear  portion  of  his 
breeches  does  duty  for  a  lady  in  the  dance,  and  as  gentlemen 
are  forced  by  the  custom  of  the  place  to  treat  their  partners 
at  the  bar,  patches  are  popular. 

Up  to  eleven  in  the  morning  hardly  a  man  was  to  be  seen : 
a  community  that  sits  up  all  night,  begins  its  work  in  the 
afternoon.  For  hours  I  had  the  blazing  hills  called  streets  to 
myself  for  meditating  ground ;  but  it  did  not  need  hours  to 
bring  me  to  thiuk  that  a  Vermonter's  description  of  the  cli- 
mate of  the  mountains  was  not  a  bad  one  when  he  said  :  "  You 
rise  at  eight,  and  shiver  in  your  cloak  till  nine,  when  you  lay 
it  aside,  and  walk  freely  in  your  woolens.     At  twelve  you  come 


143  Greater  Britain. 

in  for  your  gauze  coat  and  your  Panama;  at  two  you  are  in  a- 
hammock  cursing  the  heat,  but  at  four  you  venture  out  again, 
and  by  five  are  in  your  woolens.  At  six  you  begin  to  shake 
with  cold,  and  shiver  on  till  bed-time,  which  you  make  darned 
early."  Even  at  this  great  height  the  thermometer  in  the 
afternoon  touches  80°  Fahr.  in  the  shade,  while  from  sunset 
to  sunrise  there  is  a  bitter  frost.  So  it  is  throughout  the  Pla- 
teau. When,  morning  after  morning,  we  reached  a  ranch,  and 
rushed  out  of  the  freezing  ambulance  through  the  still  colder 
outer  air  to  the  fragrant  cedar  fire,  there  to  roll  with  pain  at 
the  thawing  of  our  joints,  it  was  hard  to  bear  it  in  mind  that 
by  eight  o'clock  we  should  be  shutting  out  the  sun,  and  by 
noon  melting  even  in  the  deepest  shade. 

As  I  sat  at  dinner  in  a  miner's  restaurant,  my  opposite 
neighbor,  finding  that  I  was  not  long  from  England,  informed 
me  he  was  "the  independent  editor  of  the  Nevada  Union 
Gazette"  and  went  on  to  ask,  "  And  how  might  you  have  left 
literatoOral  pursoots?  How  air  Tennyson  and  Thomas  T. 
Carlyle  ?"  I  assured  him  that  to  the  best  of  my  belief  they 
were  fairly  well,  to  which  his  reply  was,  "  Guess  them  ther 
men  ken  sling  ink,  they  ken."  When  we  parted,  he  gave  me. 
a  copy  of  his  paper,  in  which  I  found  that  he  called  a  rival 
editor  "  a  walking  whisky-bottle  "  and  "  a  Fenian  imp."  The 
latter  phrase  reminded  me  that  of  the  two  or  three  dozen 
American  editors  that  I  had  met,  this  New  Englander  was 
the  first  who  was  "native  born."  Stenhouse,  in  Salt  Lake 
City,  is  an  Englishman,  so  is  Stanton  of  Denver,  and  the 
whole  of  the  remainder  of  the  band  were  Irishmen.  As  for 
the  earlier  assertion  in  the  "  editorial,"  it  was  not  a  wild  one, 
seeing  that  Virginia  City  has  five  hundred  whisky-shops  for 
a  population  of  ten  thousand.  Artemus  Ward  said  of  Vir- 
ginia City,  in  a  farewell  speech  to  the  inhabitants  that  should 
have  been  published  in  his  works,  "  I  never,  gentlemen,  was 
in  a  city  where  I  was  treated  so  tcell,  nor,  I  Avill  add,  so  often.'''' 
Through  every  open  door  the  diggers  can  be  seen  tossing 
the  whisky  down  their  throats  with  a  scowl  of  resolve,  as 
though  they  were  committing  suicide — which,  indeed,  except 
in  the  point  of  speed,  is  probably  the  case. 

The  Union  Gazette  was  not  the  only  paper  that  I  had  given 
me  to  read  that  morning.     Not  a  bridge  over  a  "  crick,"  not 


Virginia  City.  110 

oven  a  blacked  pair  of  boots,  made  me  so  thoroughly  aware 
that  I  had  in  a  measure  returned  to  civilization,  as  did  the 
gift  of  an  Alta  California  containing  a  report  of  a  debate 
in  the  English  Parliament  upon  the  Bank  Charter  Act.  The 
speeches  were  appropriate  to  my  feelings  ;  I  had  just  return- 
ed not  only  to  civilization,  but  to  the  European  inconveniences 
of  gold  and  silver  money."  In  Utah,  gold  and  greenbacks  cir- 
culate indifferently,  with  a  double  set  of  prices  always  mark- 
ed and  asked  ;  in  Nevada  and  California,  greenbacks  are  as 
invisible  as  gold  in  New  York  or  Kansas.  Nothing  can  per- 
suade the  Californians  that  the  adoption  by  the  Eastern  States 
of  an  inconvertible  paper  system  is  any  thing  but  the  result 
of  a  conspiracy  against  the  Pacific  States — one  in  which  they 
at  least  are  determined  to  have  no  share.  Strongly  Unionist 
in  feeling  as  were  California,  Oregon,  and  Nevada  during  the 
rebellion,  to  have  forced  greenbacks  upon  them  would  have 
been  almost  more  than  their  loyalty  would  have  borne.  In  the 
severest  taxation  they  were  prepared  to  acquiesce  ;  but  paper- 
money  they  believed  to  be  downright  robbery,  and  the  inven- 
tion of  the  devil. 

To  me  the  reaching  gold  once  more  was  far  from  pleasant, 
for  the  advantages  of  paper-money  to  the  traveller  are  enor- 
mous :  it  is  light,  it  wears  no  holes  in  your  pockets,  it  reveals 
its  presence  by  no  untimely  clinking;  when  you  jump  from  a 
coach,  every  thief  within  a  mile  is  not  at  once  aware  that  you 
have  ten  dollars  in  your  right-hand  pocket.  The  Nevadans 
say  that  forgeries  are  so  common  that  their  neighbors  in  Col- 
orado have  been  forced  to  agree  that  any  decent  imitation 
shall  be  taken  as  good,  it  being  too  difficult  to  examine  into 
each  case.  For  my  part,  though  in  rapid  travel  a  good  deal 
of  paper  passed  through  my  hands  in  change,  my  only  loss  by 
forgery  was  one  half-dollar  note ;  my  loss  by  wear  and  tear, 
the  same. 

In  spite  of  the  gold  currency,  prices  are  higher  in  Nevada 
than  in  Denver.  A  shave  is  half  a  dollar — gold  ;  in  Washoe, 
in  Atchison,  but  a  paper  quarter.  A  boot-blacking  is  fifty 
cents  in  gold,  instead  of  ten  cents  paper,  as  in  Chicago  or  St. 
Louis. 

During  the  Avar,  when  fluctuations  in  the  value  of  the  paper 
were   gi'eat  and  sudden,  prices  changed  from  day  to   day. 


150  Greater  Britain. 

Hotel  proprietors  in  the  West  received  their  quests  at  break- 
fast, it   is    said,  with    ''Glorious   news;    we've   whipped   at 

.     Gold's  180;  board's  down  half  a   dollar."     While  I 

was  in  the  country,  gold  fluctuated  between  140  and  1G8,  but 
prices  remained  unaltered. 

Paper-money  is  of  some  use  to  a  young  country  in  making 
the  rate  of  wages  appear  enormous,  and  so  attracting  immi- 
gration. If  a  Cork  bog-trotter  is  told  that  he  can  get  two 
dollars  a  day  for  his  work  in  America,  but  only  one  in  Cana- 
da, no  economic  considerations  interfere  to  prevent  him  rush- 
ing to  the  nominally  higher  rate.  Whether  the  working-men 
of  America  have  been  gainers  by  the  inflation  of  the  curren- 
cy, or  the  reverse,  it  is  hard  to  say.  It  has  been  stated  in  the 
Senate  that  wages  have  risen  sixty  per  cent.,  and  prices  nine- 
ty per  cent.;  but  "prices"  is  a  term  of  great  width.  The 
men  themselves  believe  that  they  have  not  been  losers,  and  no 
argument  can  be  so  strong  as  that. 

My  first  afternoon  upon  Mount  Davidson  I  spent  under- 
ground in  the  Gould  and  Curry  mine,  the  wealthiest  and 
largest  of  those  that  have  tapped  the  famous  Comstock  lode. 
In  this  single  vein  of  silver  lies  the  prosperity  not  only  of  the 
city,  but  of  Nevada  State  ;  its  discovery  will  have  hastened 
the  completion  of  the  overland  railway  itself  by  several  years. 
It  is  owing  to  the  enormous  yield  of  this  one  lode  that  the 
United  States  now  stands  second  only  to  Mexico  as  a  silver- 
producing  land.  In  one  year  Nevada  has  given  the  world  as 
much  silver  as  there  came  from  the  mines  of  all  Peru. 

The  rise  of  Nevada  has  been  sudden.  I  was  shown  in 
Virginia  City  a  building  block  of  land  that  rents  for  ten  times 
what  it  cost  four  years  ago.  Nothing  short  of  solid  silver  by 
the  yard  would  have  brought  twenty  thousand  men  to  live 
upon  the  summit  of  Mount  Davidson.  It  is  easy  here  to  un- 
derstand the  mad  rush  and  madder  speculation  that  took 
place  at  the  time  of  the  discovery.  Every  valley  in  the 
Washoe  Range  was  "prospected,"  and  pronounced  paved 
with  silver ;  every  mountain  was  a  solid  mass.  "  Cities " 
were  laid  out,  and  town  lots  sold,  wherever  room  was  afforded 
by  a  flat  piece  of  ground.  The  publication  of  the  Californian 
newspapers  was  suspended,  as  writers,  editors,  proprietors, 
and  devils,  all  had  gone  with  the  rush.     San  Francisco  went 


Virginia  City.  151 

clean  mad,  and  London  and  Paris  were  not  far  behind.  Of 
the  hundred  "cities"  founded,  but  one  was  built;  of  the 
thousand  claims  registered,  but  a  hundred  were  taken  up  and 
worked;  of  the  companies  formed,  but  half  a  dozen  ever  paid 
a  dividend  except  that  obtained  from  the  sale  of  their  plant. 
The  silver  of  which  the  whole  base  of  Mount  Davidson  is 
composed  has  not  been  traced  in  the  surrounding  hills,  though 
they  are  covered  with  a  forest  of  posts,  marking  the  limits 
of  forgotten  "claims  :"  "James  Thompson,  130  feet  N.E.  by 
N. ;"  "Ezra  "Williams,  130  feet  due  E. ;"  and  so  for  miles. 
The  Gould  and  Curry  Company,  on  the  other  hand,  is  said  to 
have  once  paid  a  larger  half-yearly  dividend  than  the  sum  of 
the  original  capital,  and  its  shares  have  been  quoted  at  1000 
per  cent.     Such  are  the  differences  of  a  hundred  yards. 

One  of  the  oddities  of  mining-life  is  that  the  gold-diggers 
profess  a  sublime  contempt  for  silver-miners  and  their  trade. 
A  Coloradan  going  West  was  asked  in  Nevada  if  in  his  coun- 
try they  could  beat  the  Comstock  lode.  "  Dear,  no  !"  he  said. 
"The  boys  with  us  are  plaguy  discouraged  jess  at  present." 
The  Nevadans  were  down  upon  the  word.  "  Discouraged,  air 
they  ?"  "  Why,  yes !  They've  jess  found  they've  got  ter  dig 
through  three  feet  of  solid  silver  'fore  ever  they  come  ter  gold." 

Some  of  the  companies  have  curious  titles.  "  The  Union 
Lumber  Association  "  is  not  bad :  but  "  The  Segregated  Bel- 
cher Mining  Enterprise  of  Gold  Hill  District,  Story  County, 
Nevada  State,"  is  far  before  it  as  an  advertising  name. 

In  a  real  "coach"  at  last — a  coach  with  windows  and  a 
roof — drawn  by  six  "  mustangs,"  we  dashed  down  Mount 
Davidson  upon  a  real  road,  engineered  with  grades  and 
bridges — my  first  since  Junction  City.  Through  the  Devil's 
Gate  we  burst  out  upon  a  chaotic  country.  For  a  hundred 
miles  the  eye  ranged  over  humps  and  bumps  of  every  size 
from  stones  to  mountains,  but  no  level  ground,  no  field,  no 
house,  no  tree,  no  green.  Not  even  the  Sahara  so  thoroughly 
deserves  the  name  of  "  desert."  In  Egypt  there  is  the  oasis,  in 
Arabia,  here  and  there  a  date  and  a  sweet-water  well ;  here 
there  is  nothing,  not  even  earth.  The  ground  is  soda,  and 
tlie  water  and  air  are  full  of  salt." 

This  road  is  notorious  for  the  depredations  of  the  "  road 
agents,"  as  white  highwaymen  are  politely  called,  red  or  yel- 


152  Greater  Britain. 

low  robbers  being  still  "  darned  thieves."  At  Desert  Wells 
the  coach  had  been  robbed,  a  week  before  I  passed,  by  men 
who  had  first  tied  np  the  ranchmen,  and  taken  their  places  to 
receive  the  driver  and  passengers  when  they  arrived.  The 
prime  object  with  the  robbers  is  the  treasury-box  of  "  dust/' 
but  they  generally  "  go  through  "  the  passengers,  by  way  of 
pastime,  after  their  more  regular  work  is  done.  As  to  firing, 
they  have  a  rule — a  simple  one.  If  a  passenger  shoots,  every 
man  is  killed.  It  need  not  be  said  that  the  armed  driver  and 
armed  guard  never  shoot ;  they  know  their  business  far  too 
well. 

Close  here  we  carne  on  hot  and  cold  springs  in  close  con- 
junction, flowing  almost  from  the  same  "  sink-hole  "  —  the 
original  twofold  springs,  I  hinted  to  our  driver,  that  Poseidon 
planted  in  the  Atlantic  isle.  He  said  that  "  some  of  that 
name "  had  a  ranch  near  Carson,  so  I  "  concluded  "  to  drop 
Poseidon,  lest  I  should  say  something  that  might  offend. 

From  Desert  "Wells  the  alkali  grew  worse  and  worse,  but 
began  to  be  alleviated  at  the  ranches  by  irrigation  of  the 
throat  with  delicious  Californian  wine.  The  plain  was  strewn 
with  erratic  boulders,  and  here  and  there  I  noticed  sharp  sand- 
cones,  like  those  of  the  Elk  Mountain  country  in  Utah. 

At  last  we  dashed  into  the  "city"  named  after  the  notori- 
ous Kit  Carson,  of  which  an  old  inhabitant  has  lately  said, 
"  This  here  city  is  growing  plaguy  mean  :  there  was  only  one 
man  shot  all  yesterday."  There  was  what  is  here  styled  an 
"  altercation  "  a  day  or  two  ago.  The  sheriff  tried  to  arrest 
a  man  in  broad  daylight  in  the  single  street  which  Carson 
boasts.  The  result  was  that  each  fired  several  shots  at  the 
other,  and  that  both  were  badly  hurt. 

The  half-deserted  mining-village  and  wholly  ruined  Mor- 
mon settlement  stand  grimly  on  the  bare  rock,  surrounded  by 
terrible  weird-looking  depressions  of  the  earth,  the  far-famed 
"  sinks,"  the  very  bottom  of  the  Plateau,  and  goal  of  all  the 
Plateau  streams — in  summer  dry,  and  spread  with  sheets  of 
salt,  in  winter  filled  with  brine.  The  Sierra  Nevada  rises 
like  a  wall  from  the  salt-pools,  with  a  fringe  of  giant  leafless 
trees  hanging  stiffly  from  its  heights — the  first  forest  since  I 
left  the  Missouri  bottoms.  The  trees  made  me  feel  that  I  was 
really  across  the  continent,  within  reach  at  least  of  the  fogs  of 


Virginia  City.  153 

the  Pacific — on  "  the  other  side ;"  that  there  was  still  ronghj 
cold  work  to  be  done,  was  clear  from  the  great  snow-fields 
that  showed  through  the  pined  with  that  threatening  black- 
ness that  the  purest  of  snows  wear  in  the  evening  when  they 
face  the  cast. 

As  I  gazed  upon  the  tremendous  battlements  of  the  Sierra, 
I  not  only  ceased  to  marvel  that  for  three  hundred  years  traffic 
had  gone  round  by  Panama  rather  than  through  these  fright- 
ful obstacles,  but  even  wondered  that  they  should  be  sur- 
mounted now.  In  this  hideous  valley  it  was  that  the  Cali- 
fornian  immigrants  wintered  in  1848,  and  killed  their  Indian 
guides  for  food.  For  three  months  more  the  strongest  of 
them  lived  upon  the  bodies  of  those  who  died,  incapable,  in 
their  weakness,  of  making  good  their  foothold  upon  the  slip- 
pery snows  of  the  Sierra.  After  a  while,  some  were  cannibals 
by  choice ;  but  the  story  is  not  one  that  can  be  told. 

Galloping  up  the  gentle  grades  of  Johnson's  Pass,  we  be- 
gan the  ascent  of  the  last  of  fifteen  great  mountain  ranges 
crossed  or  flanked  since  we  had  left  Salt  Lake  City.  The 
thought  recalled  a  passage  of  arms  that  had  occurred  at  Den- 
ver between  Dixon  and  Governor  Gilpin.  In  his  grand  en- 
thusiastic way,  the  governor,  pointing  to  the  Cordilleras,  said, 
"  Five  hundred  snowy  ranges  lie  between  this  and  San  Fran- 
cisco." "  Peaks,"  said  Dixon.  "  Ranges  !"  thundered  Gilpin ; 
"  I've  seen  them." 

Of  the  fifteen  greater  ranges  to  the  westward  of  Salt  Lake, 
eight  at  least  are  named  from  the  rivers  or  valleys  they  con- 
tain, or  are  wholly  nameless.  Trade  has  preceded  survey; 
the  country  is  not  yet  thoroughly  explored.  The  six  paper 
maps  by  which  I  travelled — the  best  and  latest — differed  in 
essential  points.  The  position  and  length  of  the  Great  Salt 
Lake  itself  are  not  yet  accurately  known  ;  the  height  of  Mount 
Hood  has  been  made  any  thing  between  nine  and  twenty 
thousand  feet ;  the  southern  boundary-line  of  Nevada  State 
passes  through  untrodden  wilds.  A  rectification  of  the  limits 
of  California  and  Nevada  was  attempted  no  great  time  ago ; 
the  head-waters  of  some  stream  which  formed  a  starting-point 
had  been  found  to  be  erroneously  laid  down. 

At  the  flourishing  young  city  of  Aurora,  in  Esmeralda 
County,  a  court  of  California  was  sitting.     A  mounted  mes- 

G2 


^^Ki^^Bfi 


F1JIDAY  S  STATION — VALLEY  OF  LAKE  TAIIOE. 


TEAMING  UP  THE  GHADE  AT   SLIPPERY  FOUD,  IN  THE   SIERRA. 


Virginia  City.  155 

senger  rode  up  at  a  great  pace,  and,  throwing  his  bridle  round 
a  stump,  dashed  in  breathlessly,  shouting,  "What's  this  here 
court?"  Being  told  that  it  was  a  Californian  court,  he  said, 
"Wall,  thet's  all  wrong:  this  here's  Nevada.  We've  been 
an'  rectified  this  boundary,  an'  California's  a  good  ten  mile  off 
here."  "Wall,  Mr.  Judge,  I  move  this  court  adjourn,"  said 
the  plaintiff's  counsel.  "  How  can  a  court  adjourn  thet's  not 
a  court  ?"  replied  the  judge.  "  Guess  I'll  go."  And  off  he 
went.  So,  if  the  court  of  Aurora  was  a  court,  it  must  be  sit- 
ting now. 

The  coaching  on  this  line  is,  beyond  comparison,  the  best 
the  world  can  show.  Drawn  by  six  half-bred  mustangs, 
driven  by  whips  of  the  fame  of  the  Hank  Monk  "  who  drove 
Greeley,"  the  mails  and  passengers  have  been  conveyed  from 
Virginia  City  to  the  rail  at  Placerville,  154  miles,  in  15  hours 
and  20  minutes,  including  a  stoppage  of  half  an  hour  for  sup- 
per, and  sixteen  shorter  stays  to  change  horses.  In  this  dis- 
tance the  Sierra  Nevada  has  to  be  traversed  by  a  rapid  rise 
of  three  thousand  feet,  a  fall  of  a  thousand  feet,  another  rise 
of  the  same,  and  then  a  descent  of  five  thousand  feet  on  the 
Californian  side. 

Before  the  road  was  made,  the  passage  was  one  of  extraordi- 
nary difficulty.  A  wagon  once  started,  they  say,  from  Folsom, 
bearing  "  Carson  or  bust"  in  large  letters  upon  the  tilt.  Aft- 
er ten  days  it  returned  lamely  enough,  with  four  of  the  twelve 
oxen  gone,  and  bearing  the  label  "  Busted." 

When  we  were  nearing  Hank  Monk's  "piece,"  I  became 
impatient  to  see  the  hero  of  the  famous  ride.  What  was  my 
disgust  when  the  driver  of  the  earlier  portion  of  the  road  ap- 
peared again  upon  the  box  in  charge  of  six  magnificent  iron- 
grays.  The  peremptory  cry  of  "  All  aboard !"  brought  me 
without  remonstrance  to  the  coach,  but  I  took -care  to  get 
upon  the  box,  although,  as  Ave  were  starting  before  the  break 
of  day,  the  frost  was  terrible.  To  my  relief,  when  I  inquired 
after  Hank,  the  driver  said  that  he  was  at  a  ball  at  a  timber- 
ranch  in  the  forest  "  six  miles  on."  At  early  light  we  reach- 
ed the  spot — the  summit  of  the  more  eastern  of  the  twin 
ranges  of  the  Sierra.  Out  came  Hank,  amid  the  cheers  of  the 
half-dozen  men  and  women  of  the  timber-ranch  who  formed 
the  "  ball,"  wrapped  up  to  the  eyes  in  furs,  and  took  the  reins 


156  GrBEATEB    BRITAIN. 

without  a  word.  For  miles  he  drove  steadily  and  moodily 
along.  I  knew  these  drivers  too  well  to  venture  upon  speak- 
ing first  when  they  were  in  the  sulks  ;  at  last,  however,  I  lost 
all  patience,  and  silently  offered  him  a  cigar.  He  took  it 
without  thanking  me,  but  after  a  few  minutes  said,  "  Thet  last 
driver,  how  did  he  drive?"  I  made  some  shuffling  answer, 
when  he  cut  in,  "  Drove  as  ef  he  were  skeert ;  and  so  he  was. 
Look  at  them  mustangs.  Yoo — ou !"  As  he  yelled,  the 
horses  started  at  what  out  here  they  style  "  the  run ;"  and 
when,  after  ten  minutes,  he  pulled  up,  Ave  must  have  done 
three  miles,  round  most  violent  and  narrow  turns,  with  only 
the  hare  precipice  at  the  side,  and  a  fall  of  often  a  hundred 
feet  to  the  stream  at  the  bottom  of  the  ravine — the  Simplon 
without  its  wall.  Dropping  into  the  talking  mood,  he  asked 
me  the  usual  questions  as  to  my  business,  and  whither  I  was 
bound.  When  I  told  him  I  thought  of  visiting  Australia,  he 
said,  "  D'you  tell  now  !  Jess  give  my  love — at  Bendigo — to 
Gumption  Dick."  Not  another  word  about  Australia  or 
Gumption  Dick  could  I  draw  from  him.  I  asked  at  Bendigo 
for  Dick ;  but  not  even  the  officer  in  command  of  the  police 
had  ever  heard  of  Hank  Monk's  friend. 

The  sun  rose  as  we  dashed  through  the  grand  landscapes 
of  Lake  Tahoe.  On  we  went,  through  gloomy  snow-drifts  and 
still  sadder  forests  of  gigantic  pines  nearly  three  hundred  feet 
in  height,  and  down  the  canon  of  the  American  River  from  the 
second  range.  Suddenly  we  left  the  snows,  and  burst  through 
the  pine  woods  into  an  open  scene.  From  gloom  there  was  a 
change  to  light ;  from  sombre  green  to  glowing  red  and  gold. 
The  trees,  no  longer  hung  with  icicles,  were  draped  with  Span- 
ish moss.  In  ten  yards  we  had  come  from  winter  into  sum- 
mer. Alkali  was  left  behind  forever ;  Ave  were  in  El  Dorado, 
ou  the  Pacific  shores — in  sunny,  dreamy  California. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

EL    DORADO. 

The  city  of  the  high-priest,  clothed  in  robes  of  gold,  figures 
lai'gely  in  the  story  of  Spanish  discovery  in  America.  The 
hardy  soldiers  Avho  crossed  the  Atlantic  in  caravels  and  cock- 


El  D  ok  a  do.  157 

boats,  and  toiled  in  leathern  doublets  and  plate  armor  through 
the  jungle-swamp  of  Panama,  were  lured  on  through  years  of 
plague  and  famine  by  the  dream  of  a  country  whose  rivers 
flowed  with  gold.  Diego  de  Mendoza  found  the  land  in  1532, 
but  it  was  not  till  January,  1848,  that  James  Marshall  washed 
the  golden  sands  of  El  Dorado. 

The  Spaniards  were  not  the  first  to  place  the  earthly  para- 
dise in  America.  Not  to  speak  of  New  Atlantis,  the  Cana- 
dian Indians  have  never  ceased  to  hand  down  to  their  sons  a 
legend  of  Western  abodes  of  bliss,  to  which  their  souls  journey 
after  death,  through  frightful  glens  and  forests.  In  their 
mystic  chants  they  describe  minutely  the  obstacles  over  which 
the  souls  must  toil  to  reach  the  regions  of  perpetual  spring. 
These  stories  are  no  mere  dreams,  but  records  of  the  gi-eat 
Indian  migration  from  the  West :  the  liquid-eyed  Hurons, 
not  sprung  from  the  Canadian  snows,  may  be  Calif ornian  if 
they  are  not  Malay,  the  Pacific  shores  their  happy  hunting- 
ground,  the  climate  of  Los  Angeles  their  never-ending  spring. 

The  names  The  Golden  State  and  El  Dorado  are  doubly 
applicable  to  California;  her  light  and  landscape,  as  well  as 
her  soil,  are  golden.  Here,  on  the  Pacific  side,  Nature  wears 
a  robe  of  deep  rich  yellow :  even  the  distant  hills,  no  longer 
purple,  are  wrapped  in  golden  haze.  No  more  cliffs  and 
caiions — all  is  rounded,  soft,  and  warm.  The  Sierra,  which 
faces  eastward,  with  four  thousand  feet  of  wall-like  rock,  on 
the  west  descends  gently  in  vine-clad  slopes  into  the  Califor- 
nian  vales,  and  trends  away  in  spurs  toward  the  sea.  The 
scenery  of  the  Nevada  side  was  weird,  but  these  western  foot- 
hills are  unlike  any  thing  in  the  world.  Drake,  who  never  left 
the  Pacific  shores,  named  the  country  New  Albion,  from  the 
whiteness  of  a  headland  on  the  coast ;  but  the  first  viceroys 
were  less  ridiculously  misled  by  patriotic  vanity  when  they 
christened  it  NeAV  Spain. 

In  the  warm,  dry  sunlight,  Ave  rolled  down  hills  of  rich,  red 
loam,  and  through  forests  of  noble  redwood — the  Sequoia 
sempervirens^hvoXhev  to  the  Seqxioia  gigantea, or  Wellingto- 
nia  of  our  lawns.  Dashing  at  full  gallop  through  the  Ameri- 
can River  just  below  its  falls,  where,  in  1848,  the  Mormons 
first  dug  that  Californian  gold  which  in  the  interests  of  their 
Church  they  had  better  have  let  alone,  we  came  upon  great 


VIEW  ON  IDE  AMERICAN  RIVER— THE  PLACE  WHERE   GOLD  WAS  FIRST  FOUND. 


El  Do  h  a  do.  159 

gangs  of  Indians  working  by  proxy  npon  the  continental  rail- 
road. The  Indian's  plan  for  living  happily  is  a  simple  one : 
he  sits  and  smokes  in  silence  while  his  women  work,  and  he 
thus  lives  upon  the  earnings  of  the  squaws.  Unlike  a  Mor- 
mon patriarch,  he  contrives  that  polygamy  shall  pay,  and  says 
with  the  New  Zealand  Maori,  "  A  man  with  one  wife  may 
starve,  but  a  man  with  many  wives  grows  fat."  These  fel- 
lows were  Shoshone's  from  the  other  side  of  the  Plateau  ;  for 
the  Pacific  Indians,  who  are  black,  not  red,  will  not  even  force 
their  wives  to  work,  which,  in  the  opinion  of  the  Western  men, 
is  the  ultimate  form  of  degradation  in  a  race.  Higher  up  the 
hills  Chinamen  alone  are  employed  ;  but  their  labor  is  too 
costly  to  be  thrown  away  upon  the  easier  work. 

In  El  Dorado  City  we  staid  not  long  enough  for  the  ex- 
ploration of  the  once  famous  surface  gold  mines,  now  forming 
one  long  vineyard,  but,  rolling  on,  were  soon  among  the  tents 
of  Placerville,  which  had  been  swept  with  fire  a  few  months 
before.  All  these  valley  diggings  have  been  deserted  for 
deep-sinking;  not  that  they  are  exhausted  yet,  but  that  the 
yield  has  ceased  to  be  sufficient  to  tempt  the  gambling  digger. 
The  men  who  lived  in  Placerville,  and  made  it  infamous 
throughout  the  world  some  years  ago,  are  scattered  now 
through  Nevada,  Arizona,  Montana,  and  the  Frazer  country, 
and  Chinamen  and  Digger  Indians  have  the  old  workings  to 
themselves,  settling  their  rights  as  against  each  other  by  daily 
battle  and  perpetual  feud.  The  Digger  Indians  are  the  most 
degraded  of  all  the  aborigines  of  North  America — outcasts 
from  the  other  tribes — men  under  a  ban — "  tapu,"  as  their 
Maori  cousins  say — weaponless,  naked  savages,  who  live  on 
roots,  and  pester  the  industrious  Chinese. 

It  is  not  with  all  their  foes  that  the  yellow  men  can  cope 
so  easily.  In  a  tiny  Chinese  theatre  in  their  camp  near  Pla- 
cerville I  saw  a  farce  which  to  the  remainder  of  the  audience 
was  no  doubt  a  very  solemn  drama,  in  which  the  adventures 
of  two  Celestials  on  the  diggings  were  given  to  the  World. 
The  only  scene  in  which  the  pantomime  was  sufficiently  clear 
for  me  to  read  it  without  the  possibility  of  error  was  one  in 
which  a  white  man — "  Melican  man" — came  to  ask  for  taxes. 
The  Chinamen  had  paid  their  taxes  once  before,  but  the  fellow 
said  that  didn't  matter.     The  yellow  men  consulted  together, 


160  Greater  Britain. 

and  at  last  agreed  that  the  stranger  was  a  humbug,  so  the  play 
ended  with  a  big  fight,  in  which  they  drove  him  off  their 
ground.  A  Chinaman  played  the  over-'cute  Yankee,  and  did 
it  well. 

Perhaps  the  tax-collectors  in  the  remoter  districts  of  the 
States  count  on  the  Chinese  to  make  up  the  deficiencies  in 
their  accounts  caused  by  the  non-payment  of  their  taxes  by 
the  whites  ;  for  even  in  these  days  of  comparative  quiet  and 
civilization,  taxes  are  not  gathered  to  their  full  amount  in  any 
of  the  Territories,  and  the  justice  of  the  collector  is  in  Montana 
tempered  by  many  a  threat  of  instant  lynching  if  he  proceeds 
with  his  assessment.  Even  in  Utah  the  returns  are  far  from 
satisfactory :  the  throe  great  merchants  of  Salt  Lake  City 
should,  if  their  incomes  are  correctly  stated,  contribute  a  heav- 
ier sum  than  that  returned  for  the  whole  of  the  population  of 
the  Territory. 

The  white  diggers  who  preceded  the  Chinese  have  left  their 
traces  in  the  names  of  lodes  and  places.  There  is  no  town, 
indeed,  in  California  with  such  a  title  as  the  Coloradan  city 
of  Buckskin  Joe,  but  Yankee  Jim  comes  near  it.  Placervillo 
itself  was  formerly  known  as  Ilangtown,  on  account  of  its  be- 
ing the  city  in  which  lynch-law  was  inaugurated.  Dead-shot 
Flat  is  not  far  from  here,  and  within  easy  distance  are  Hell's 
Delight,  Jackass  Gulch,  and  Loafei-,s  Hill.  The  once  famous 
Plug-ugly  Gulch  has  now  another  name  ;  but  of  Chuckle-head 
Diggings  and  Puppytown  I  could  not  find  the  whereabouts  in 
my  walks  and  rides.  Grave-yard  Canon,  Gospel  Gulch,  and 
Paint-pot  Hill  are  other  Californian  names.  It  is  to  be  hoped 
that  the  English  and  Spanish  names  will  live  unmutilated  in 
California  and  Nevada,  to  hand  down,  in  liquid  syllables,  the 
history  of  a  half-forgotten  conquest,  an  already  perished  race. 
San  Francisco  lias  become  "  Fr'isco  "  in  speech  if  not  on  paper, 
and  Sacramento  will  hardly  bear  the  wear  and  tear  of  Califor- 
nian life  ;  but  the  use  of  the  Spanish  tongue  has  spread  among 
the  Americans  who  have  dealings  with  the  Mexican  country- 
folk of  California  State,  and,  except  in  mining  districts,  the  lo- 
cal names  will  stand. 

It  is  not  places  only  that  have  strange  designations  in 
America.  Out  of  the  Puritan  fashion  of  naming  children 
from  the  Old  Testament  patriarchs  has  grown,  by  a  sort  of 


El  Dohado.  101 

recoil,  the  custom  of  following  the  heroes  of  the  classics,  and 
when  they  fail,  inventing  strange  titles  for  children.  Mahonri 
Cahoon  lives  in  Salt  Lake  City ;  Attila  Harding  was  secretary 
to  one  of  the  governors  of  Utah ;  Michigan  University  has 
for  president  Erastus  Haven;  for  superintendent,  Oramel 
Ilosford ;  for  professors,  Abram  Sanger,  Silas  Douglas,  Moses 
(riuin,  Zina  Pitcher,  Alonzo  Pitman,  De  Volson  Wood,  Lu- 
cius Chapin,  and  Corydon  Ford.  Luman  Stevens,  Bolivar 
Barnura,  ~VVryllys  Ransom,  Ozora  Stearns,  and  Buel  Derby 
were  Michigan  officers  during  the  war,  and  Epaphroditus  Ran- 
som was  formerly  governor  of  the  State.  Thereon  Rockwell, 
Gershon  Weston,  and  Bela  Kellogg,  are  well-known  politicians 
in  Massachusetts,  and  Colonel  Liberty  Billings  is  equally  prom- 
inent in  Florida.  In  New  England  school-lists  it  is  hard  to 
pick  boys  from  girls.  Who  shall  tell  the  sex  of  Lois  Lombard, 
Asahel  Morton,  Ginery  French,  Royal  Miller,  Thankful  Poyne  ? 
A  Chicago  man  who  was  lynched  in  Central  Illinois  while  I 
was  in  the  neighborhood  was  named  Alonza  Tibbets.  Elipha- 
let  Arnould  and  Velenus  Sherman  arc  ranchmen  on  the  over- 
land road ;  Sereno  Burt  is  an  editor  in  Montana  ;  Persis  Boyn- 
ton,  a  merchant  in  Chicago.  Zelotes  Terry,  Datus  Darner, 
Zeryiah  Rainforth,  Barzellai  Stanton,  Sardis  Clark,  Ozias 
Williams,  Xenas  Phelps,  Converse  Hopkins,  and  Hirodshai 
Blake,  are  names  with  which  I  have  met.  Zilpha,  Huldah, 
Nabby,  Basetha,  Minnesota,  and  Semantha,  are  New  England 
ladies ;  while  one  gentleman  of  Springfield,  lately  married, 
caught  a  Tartia.  One  of  the  earliest  enemies  of  the  Mormons 
was  Palatiah  Allen ;  one  of  their  first  converts,  Preserved 
Harris.  Taking  the  pedigree  of  Joe  Smith,  the  Mormon 
prophet,  as  that  of  a  representative  New  England  family,  we 
shall  find  that  his  aunts  were  Lovisa  and  Lovina  Mack,  Dolly 
Smith,  Eunice  and  Miranda  Pearce ;  his  uncles,  Royal,  Ira, 
and  Bushrod  Smith.  His  grandfather's  name  was  Asael ;  of 
his  great-aunts,  one  was  Hephzibah,  another  Hypsebeth,  and 
another,  Vasta.  The  prophet's  eldest  brother's  name  was  Al- 
vin  ;  his  youngest,  Don  Carlos  ;  his  sister,  Sophronia  ;  and  his 
sister-in-law,  Jerusha  Smith ;  while  a  nephew  was  christened 
Chilon.  One  of  the  nieces  was  Levira,  and  another,  Rizpah. 
The  first  wife  of  George  A.  Smith,  the  prophet's  cousin,  is 
Bathsheba,  and  his  eldest  daughter  also  bears  this  name. 


102  Greater  Britain. 

In  the  smaller  towns  near  Placerville  there  is  still  a  wide 
field  for  the  discovery  of  character  as  Avell  as  gold  ;  but  eccen- 
tricity among  the  diggers  here  seems  chiefly  to  waste  itself  on 
food.  The  luxury  of  this  Pacific  country  is  amazing.  The 
restaurants  and  cafes  of  each  petty  digging-town  put  forth 
bills  of  fare  which  the  "  Trois  Freres  "  could  not  pqual  for  in- 
genuity ;  Avine  lists  such  as  Delmonkjo's  can  not  beat.  The 
facilities  are  great :  except  in  the  far  interior  or  on  the  hills, 
one  even  spring  reigns  unchangeably — summer  in  all  except 
the  heat;  every  fruit  and  vegetable  of  the  world  is  perpetual- 
ly in  season.  Fruit  is  not  named  in  the  hotel  bills  of  fare,  but 
all  the  day  long  there  are  piled  in  strange  confusion  on  the 
tables  Mission  grapes,  the  Californian  Bartlet  pears,  Empire 
apples  from  Oregon,  melons — English,  Spanish,  American,  and 
musk ;  peaches,  nectarines,  and  fresh  almonds.  All  comers 
may  help  themselves,  and  wash  down  the  fruit  with  excellent 
Californian-made  Sauterne.  If  dancing,  gambling,  drinking, 
and  still  shorter  cuts  to  the  devil  have  their  votaries  among 
the  diggers,  there  is  no  employment  upon  which  they  so  free- 
ly spend  their  cash  as  on  dishes  cunningly  prepared  by  cooks 
— Chinese,  Italian,  Bordelais — who  follow  every  "  rush."  Aft- 
er the  doctor  and  the  coroner,  no  one  makes  money  at  the  dig- 
gings like  the  cook.  The  dishes  smell  of  the  Californian  soil; 
baked  rock-cod  alaBuena  Vista,  broiled  Californian  quail,  with 
Russian  River  bacon,  Sacramento  snipes  on  toast,  Oregon  ham, 
with  champagne  sauce,  and  a  dozen  other  toothsome  things — 
these  were  the  dishes  on  the  Placerville  bill  of  fare  in  a  hotel 
which  had  escaped  the  fire,  but  whose  only  guests  were  dig- 
gers and  their  friends.  A  few  Atlantic  States  dishes  were 
down  upon  the  list :  hominy,  cod  chowder — hardly  equal,  I 
fear,  to  that  of  Salem — sassafras  candy,  and  squash  tart,  but 
never  a  mention  of  pork  and  molasses,  dear  to  the  Massachu- 
setts boy.  All  these  good  things  the  diggers,  when  "  dirt  is 
plenty," moisten  with  Clicquot  or  Ileidsick  cabinet;  when  re- 
turns are  small,  with  their  excellent  Sonoma  wine. 

Even  earthquakes  fail  to  interrupt  the  triumphs  of  the 
cooks.  The  last  "bad  shake"  was  fourteen  days  ago,  but  it 
is  forgotten  in  the  joy  called  forth  by  the  discovery  of  a  thir- 
teenth way  to  cook  fresh  oysters,  which  are  brought  here  from 
the  coast  by  train.     There  is  still  a  something  in  Placerville 


El  Don  ado.  1GJ 

that  smacks  of  the  time  when  tin-tacks  were  selling  for  their 
weight  in  gold. 

Wandering  through  the  single  remaining  street  of  Placer- 
ville  before  I  left  for  the  Southern  country,  I  saw  that  grapes 
were  marked  "  three  cents  a  pound  ;"  but  as  the  lowest  coin 
known  on  the  Pacific  shores  is  the  ten-cent  bit,  the  price  exists 
but  upon  paper.  Three  pounds  of  grapes,  however,  for  "  a 
bit"  is  a  practicable  purchase,  in  which  I  indulged  when  start- 
ing on  my  journey  South  :  in  the  towns  you  have  always  the 
hotel  supply.  If  the  value  of  the  smallest  coin  be  a  test  of  the 
prosperity  of  a  country,  California  must  stand  high.  Not  only 
is  nothing  less  than  the  bit,  or  fivepence,  known,  but  when  five- 
pence  is  deducted  from  a  "  quarter,"  or  shilling,  fivepence  is 
all  you  get  or  give  for  change — a  gain  or  loss  upon  which  Cal- 
iforuian  shopkeepers  look  with  profound  indifference. 

Hearing  a  greater  jingling  of  glasses  from  one  bar-room 
than  from  all  the  other  hundred  whisky-shops  of  Placerville,  I 
turned  into  it  to  seek  the  cause,  and  found  a  Vermonter  lect- 
uring on  Lincoln  and  the  war  to  an  audience  of  some  fifty  dig- 
gers. The  lectui*er  and  bar-keeper  stood  together  within  the 
sacred  inclosure,  the  one  mixing  his  drinks,  while  the  other 
rounded  off  his  periods  in  the  inflated  Western  style.  The 
audience  were  critical  and  cold  till  near  the  close  of  the  ora- 
tion, when  the  "corpse-revivers"  they  were  drinking  seemed 
to  take  effect,  and  to  be  at  the  bottom  of  the  stentorian  shout 
"  Thet's  bully,"  with  which  the  peroration  was  rewarded.  The 
Vermonter  told  me  that  he  had  come  round  from  Panama, 
and  was  on  his  way  to  Austin,  as  Placerville  was  "  played  out " 
since  its  "  claims  "  had  "  fizzled." 

They  have  no  lecture-room  here  at  present,  as  it  seems  ;  but 
that  there  are  churches,  however  small,  appears  from  a  para- 
graph in  the  Placerville  news-sheet  of  to-day,  which  chronicles 
the  removal  of  a  Methodist  meeting-house  from  Block  A  to 
Block  C,  vice  a  Catholic  chapel  retired,  "  having  obtained  a 
superior  location." 

A  few  days  were  all  that  I  could  spend  in  the  valleys  that 
lie  between  the  Sierra  Contra  Costa  range,  basking  in  a  rich 
sunlight,  and  unsurpassed  in  the  world  for  climate,  scenery, 
and  soil.  This  single  State — one  of  forty-five — has  twice  the 
area  of  Great  Britain,  the  most  fertile  of  known  soils,  and  the 


1G4 


Greater  Britain. 


sun  anil  sea-breeze  of  Greece.  Western  rhapsodies  are  the 
expression  of  the  intoxication  produced  by  such  a  spectacle, 
but  they  are  outdone  by  facts. 

For  mere  charm  to  the  eye,  it  is  hard  to  give  the  palm  be- 
tween the  cracks  and  canons  of  the  Sierra  and  the  softer  vales 
of  the  coast  range,  where  the  hot  sun  is  tempered  by  the  cool 
Pacific  breeze,  and  thunder  and  lightning  are  unknown. 

Coming  from  the  wilds  of  the  Carson  Desert  and  of  Mirage 


TIIE  BRIDAL   VEIL   FALL,    YOSEMITE    VALLEY. 

Plains,  the  more  sensuous  beauty  of  the  lower  dells  has  for  the 
eye  the  relief  that  travellers  from  the  coast  must  seek  in  the 
loftier  heights  and  precipices  of  the  Yosemite.  The  oak-filled 
valleys  of  the  Contra  Costa  range  have  all  the  pensive  repose 


El  Dorado.  1G5 

of  the  sheltered  vales  that  lie  between  the  Apennines  and  the 
Adriatic  from  Rimini  to  Ancona;  but  California  has  the  ad- 
vantage in  her  skies.  Italy  has  the  blue,  but  not  the  golden 
haze. 

Nothing  can  be  more  singular  than  the  variety  of  beauty 
that  lies  hid  in  these  Pacific  slopes;  all  that  is  best  in  Canada 
and  the  Eastern  States  finds  more  than  its  equal  here.  The 
terrible  grandeur  of  Cape  Trinite,  on  the  Saguenay,  and  the 
panorama  of  loveliness  from  the  terrace  at  Quebec,  are  alike 
outdone. 

Americans  certainly  need  not  go  to  Europe  to  find  scen- 
ery ;  but  neither  need  they  go  to  California,  or  even  Colorado. 
Those  who  tell  us  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  natural  beauty 
west  of  the  Atlantic  can  scarcely  know  the  Eastern,  while 
they  ignore  the  Western  and  Central  States.  The  world  can 
show  few  scenes  more  winning  than  Israel's  River  Valley,  in 
the  White  Mountains  of  New  Hampshire,  or  North  Conway, 
in  the  southern  slopes  of  the  same  range.  Nothing  can  be 
more  f  nil  of  grandeur,  than  the  passage  of  the  James  at  Bal- 
cony Falls,  where  the  river  rushes  through  a  crack  in  the 
Appalachian  chain  ;  the  wilderness  of  Northern  New  York  is 
unequalled  of  its  kind,  and  there  are  delicious  landscapes  in 
the  Adiroudacks.  As  for  river  scenery,  the  Hudson  is 
grander  than  the  Rhine  ;  the  Susquehanna  is  lovelier  than  the 
Mease  ;  the  Schuylkill  prettier  than  the  Seine  ;  the  Mohawk 
more  enchanting  than  the  Dart.  Of  the  rivers  of  North 
Europe,  the  Neckar  alone  is  not  beaten  in  the  States. 

Americans  admit  that  their  scenery  is  fine,  but  pretend 
that  it  is  wholly  wanting  in  the  interest  that  historic  memories 
bestow.  So-called  republicans  affect  to  find  a  charm  in  Bishop 
Hatto's  Tower  which  is  wanting  in  Iiwing's  "  Sunny  side  ;"  the 
ten  thousand  virgins  of  Cologne  live  in  their  fancy,  while 
Constitution  Island  and  Fort  Washington  are  forgotten 
names.  Americans  or  Britishers,  we  Saxons  are  all  alike — a 
wandering,  discontented  race ;  we  go  4000  miles  to  find  Sleepy 
Hollow,  or  Killian  Van  Rensselaer's  Castle,  or  Hiawatha's 
great  red  pipe-stone  quarry ;  and  the  Americans  who  live  in 
the  castle,  picnic  yearly  in  the  Hollow,  and  flood  the  quarry 
for  a  skating-rink,  come  here  to  England  to  visit  Burns's  house 
or  to  sit  in  Pope's  arm-chair. 


106  Greater  Britain. 

Down  South  I  saw  clearly  the  truth  of  a  thought  that 
struck  nie  before  I  had  been  ten  minutes  west  of  the  Sierra 
Pass.  California  is  Saxon  only  in  the  looks  and  language  of 
the  people  of  its  towns.  In  Pennsylvania  you  may  sometimes 
fancy  yourself  in  Sussex  ;  while  in  New  England  you  seem 
only  to  be  in  some  part  of  Europe  that  you  have  never  hap- 
pened to  light  upon  before,  in  California  you  arc  at  last  in  a 
new  world.  The  hills  are  weirdly  peaked  or  flattened,  the 
skies  are  new,  the  birds  and  plants  are  new ;  the  atmosphere, 
crisp  though  warm,  is  unlike  any  in  the  world  but  that  of 
South  Australia.  It  will  be  strange  if  the  Pacific  coast  does 
not  produce  a  new  school  of  Saxon  poets — painters  it  has  al- 
ready given. 

Returning  to  Placerville  after  an  eventless  exploration  of 
t'le  exquisite  scenery  to  the  south,  I  took  the  railway  once 
again,  the  first  time  since  I  had  left  Manhattan  City,  1800 
miles  away,  and  was  soon  in  Sacramento,  the  State  capital,  now 
recovering  slowly  from  the  flood  of  1862.  Near  the  city  I 
made  out  Oak  Grove — famed  for  duels  between  well-known 
Californians.  Here  it  was  that  General  Denver,  State  sena- 
tor, shot  Mr.  Gilbert,  the  representative  in  Congress,  in  a 
duel  fought  with  rifles.  Here,  too,  it  was  that  Mr.  Thomas, 
district  attorney  for  Placer  County,  killed  Dr.  Dickson,  of  the 
Marine  Hospital,  in  a  duel  with  pistols  in  1854.  Records  of 
duels  form  a  serious  part  of  the  State  history.  At  Lone 
Mountain  Cemetery  at  San  Francisco  there  is  a  great  marble 
monument  to  the  Hon.  David  Broderick,  shot  by  Chief-justico 
Terry,  of  the  Supreme  Court,  in  1859. 

A  few  hours'  quiet  steaming  in  the  sunlight  down  the 
Sacramento  River,  past  Rio  Vista  and  Montezuma,  through 
the  gap  in  the  Contra  Costa  range,  at  which  the  grand  volcanic 
peak  of  Monte  Diablo  stands  sentinel,  watching  over  the 
Martinez  Straits,  and  there  opened  to  the  south  and  west  a 
vast  mountain-surrounded  bay.  Volumes  of  cloud  were  roll- 
ing in  unceasingly  from  the  ocean  through  the  Golden  Gate, 
past  the  fortified  Island  of  Alcatras,  and  spending  themselves 
in  the  opposite  shores  of  San  Rafael,  Benicia,  and  Vallejo. 
At  last  I  was  across  the  continent,  and  face  to  face  with  the 
Pacific. 


Lynch -Law.  107 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

LY2TCH-LAW. 

"  Caltpo^nians  are  called  the  scum  of  the  earth,  yet  their 
great  city  is  the  best  policed  in  the  World,"  said  a  New  York 
friend  to  me,  when  he  heard  that  I  thought  of  crossing  the 
continent  to  San  Francisco. 

"  Them  New  Yorkers  is  a  sight  too  fond  of  looking  after 
other  people's  morals,"  replied  an  old  "  Forty-niner,"  to  whom 
I  repeated  this  phrase,  having  first  toned  it  down,  however. 
"  Still,"  he  went  on,  "  our  history's  baddish,  but  it  ain't  for  us 
to  play  showman  to  our  own  worst  pints  :  let  every  man  skin 
his  own  skunk  !" 

The  story  of  the  early  days  of  San  Francisco,  as  to  which 
my  curiosity  was  thus,  excited,  is  so  curious  an  instance  of  the 
development  of  an  English  community  under  the  most  inau- 
spicious circumstances,  that  the  whole  time  which  I  spent  in 
the  city  itself  I  devoted  to  hearing  the  tale  from  those  who 
knew  the  actors.  Not  only  is  the  history  of  the  two  Vigilance 
Committees  in  itself  characteristic,  but  it  works  in  With  what 
I  had  gathered  in  Kansas,  and  Illinois,  and  Colorado  as  to  the 
operation  of  the  claim-clubs  ;  and  the  stories,  taken  together, 
form  a  typical  picture  of  the  rise  of  a  New  English  country. 

The  discovery  of  gold  in  1848  brought  down  on  luckless 
California  the  idle,  the  reckless,  the  vagabonds,  first  of  Poly- 
nesia, then  of  all  the  world.  Street  fighting,  public  gaming, 
masked  balls  given  by  unknown  women,  and  paid  for  nobody 
knew  how,  but  attended  by  governor,  supervisors,  and  alcalde 
— all  these  were  minor  matters  by  the  side  of  the  general  un- 
defined ruffianism  of  the  place.  Before  the  end  of  1849,  San 
Francisco  presented  on  a  gigantic  scale  much  the  same  ap- 
pearance that  Helena,  in  Montana,  wears  in  18G6. 

Desperadoes  poured  in  from  all  sides,  the  best  of  the  bad 
flocking  off  to  the  mines,  while  the  worst  among  the  villains 
— those  who  lacked  energy  as  well  as  moral  sense — remained 
in  the  city,  to  raise  by  thieving  or  in  the  gambling-booth  the 


1G8  Greater  Britain. 

"  pile  "  that  they  were  too  indolent  to  earn  by  pick  and  pan. 
Hundreds  of  "emancipists"  from  Sydney,  "  old  lags "  from 
Norfolk  Island,  the  pick  of  the  criminals  of  England,  still 
further  trained  and  confirmed  in  vice  and  crime  by  the  expe- 
riences of  Macquarie  Harbor  and  Port  Arthur,  rushed  to  San 
Francisco  to  continue  a  career  which  the  vigilance  of  the  con- 
vict police  made  hopeless  in  Tasmania  and  New  South  Wales. 
The  floating  vice  of  the  Pacific  ports  of  South  America  soon 
gathered  to  a  spot  where  there  were  not  only  men  to  fleece, 
but  men  who,  being  fleeced,  could  pay.  The  police  were  nec- 
essarily few,  for,  appoint  a  man  to-day,  and  to-morrow  he  Avas 
gone  to  the  Placers  with  some  new  friend ;  those  who  could 
be  prevailed  upon  to  remain  a  fortnight  in  the  force  were  ac- 
cessible to  bribes  from  the  men  they  were  set  to  watch.  They 
themselves  admitted  their  inaction,  but  ascribed  it  to  the  con- 
tinual change  of  place  among  the  criminals,  which  prevented 
the  slightest  knowledge  of  their  characters  and  haunts.  The 
Australian  jail-birds  formed  a  quarter  known  as  "  Sydney 
Town,"  which  soon  became  what  the  Bay  of  Islands  had  been 
ten  years  before — the  Alsatia  of  the  Pacific.  In  spite  of  daily 
murders,  not  a  single  criminal  was  hanged. 

The  ruffians  did  not  all  agree :  there  were  jealousies  among 
the  various  bands ;  feuds  between  the  Australians  and  Chili- 
ans ;  between  the  Mexicans  and  the  New  Yorkers.  Under 
the  various  names  of  "  Hounds,"  "  Begulators,"  "  Sydney 
Ducks,"  and  "  Sydney  Coves,"  the  English  convict-party  or- 
ganized themselves  in  opposition  to  the  Chilenos,  as  well  as 
to  the  police  and  law-abiding  citizens.  Gangs  of  villains, 
whose  sole  bond  of  union  Avas  robbery  or  murder,  marched, 
armed  with  bludgeons  and  revolvers,  every  Sunday  afternoon, 
to  the  sound  of  music,  unhindered  through  the  streets,  pro- 
fessing that  they  were  "  guardians  of  the  community  "  against 
the  Spaniards,  Mexicans,  and  South  Americans. 

At  last  a  movement  took  place  among  the  merchants  and 
reputable  inhabitants  which  resulted  in  the  break-up  of  the 
Australian  gangs.  By  an  uprising  of  the  American  citizens 
of  San  Francisco,  in  response  to  a  proclamation  by  T.  M. 
Leavenworth,  the  alcalde,  twenty  of  the  most  notorious  among 
the  "Hounds"  were  seized  and  shipped  to  China:  it  is  be- 
lieved that  some  were  taken  south  in  irons  and  landed  near 


Lynch -Law.  1G9 

Cape  Horn.  "Anywhere,  so  that  they  could  not  come  back," 
as  my  informant  said. 

For  a  week  or  two  things  Avent  well,  but  a  fresh  inpour  of 
rogues  and  villains  soon  swamped  the  volunteer  police  by  sheer 
force  of  numbers;  and  in  February,  1851,  occurred  an  in- 
stance of  united  action  among  the  citizens,  which  is  noticeable 
as  the  forerunner  of  the  Vigilance  Committees.  A  Mr.  Jansen 
had  been  stunned  by  a  blow  from  a  slung-shot,  and  his  person 
and  premises  rifled  by  Australian  thieves.  During  the  exam- 
ination of  two  prisoners  arrested  on  suspicion,  five  thousand  cit- 
izens gathered  round  the  City  Hall,  and  handbills  were  circu- 
lated, in  which  it  was  proposed  that  the  prisoners  should  be 
lynched.  In  the  afternoon  an  attempt  to  seize  the  men  was 
made,  but  repulsed  by  another  section  of  the  citizens — the 
"Washington  Guard.  A  meeting  was  held  on  the  Plaza,  and 
a  committee  appointed  to  watch  the  authorities,  and  prevent  a 
release.  A  well-known  citizen,  Mr.  Brannan,  made  a  speech, 
in  which  he  said :  "  We,  the  people,  are  the  mayor,  the  record- 
er, and  the  laws."  The  alcalde  addressed  the  croAvd,  and  sug- 
gested, by  way  of  compromise,  that  they  should  elect  a  jury, 
which  should  sit  in  the  regular  court  and  try  the  prisoners. 
This  was  refused,  and  the  people  elected  not  only  a  jury,  but 
three  judges,  a  sheriff,  a  clerk,  a  public  prosecutor,  and  two 
council  for  the  defense.  This  court  then  tried  the  prisoners 
in  their  absence,  and  the  juiy  failed  to  agree — nine  were  for 
conviction,  and  three  were  doubtful.  "  Hang  'em  anyhow ; 
majority  rules,"  was  the  shout,  but  the  popular  judges  stood 
firm,  and  discharged  their  jury,  while  the  people  acquiesced. 
The  next  day  the  prisoners  were  tried  and  convicted  by  the 
i-egular  court,  although  they  were  ultimately  found  to  be  in- 
nocent men. 

Matters  now  went  from  bad  to  worse :  five  times  San  Fran- 
cisco was  swept  from  end  to  end  by  fires  known  to  have  been 
helped  on,  if  not  originally  kindled,  by  incendiaries  in  the  hope 
of  plunder;  and  when,  by  the  fires  of  May  and  June,  1851, 
hardly  a  house  was  left  untouched,  the  pious  Bostonians  held 
up  their  hands,  and  cried  "  Gomorrah  !" 

Immediately  after  the  discovery  that  the  June  fire  was  not 
accidental,  the  Vigilance  Committee  was  formed,  being  self- 
appointed,  and  consisting  of  the  foremost  merchants  in  the 

H 


170  Greater  Britain. 

place.  This  was  on  the  7th  of  June,  according  to  my  friend ; 
on  the  9th,  according  to  the  Californian  histories.  It  was 
rumored  that  the  Committee  consisted  of  two  hundred  citi- 
zens ;  it  was  known  that  they  were  supported  by  the  whole  of 
the  city  press.  They  published  a  declaration,  in  which  they 
stated  that  there  is  "  no  security  for  life  or  property  under 
the  .  .  .  law  as  now  administered."  This  they  ascribed  to  the 
"  quibbles  of  the  law,"  the  "  corruption  of  the  police,"  the 
"  insecurity  of  prisons,"  the  "  laxity  of  those  who  pretend  to 
administer  justice."  The  secret  instructions  of  the  Commit- 
tee contain  a  direction  that  the  members  shall  at  once  assem- 
ble at  the  committee-room  whenever  signals  consisting  of  two 
taps  on  a  bell  are  heard  at  intervals  of  one  minute.  The 
Committee  was  organized  with  President,  Vice-president, 
Secretary,  Treasurer,  Sergeant-at-arms,  Standing  Committee 
on  Qualifications,  and  Standing  Committee  of  Finance.  No  one 
was  to  be  admitted  a  member  unless  he  were  "  a  respeotable 
citizen,  and  approved  by  the  Committee  on  Qualifications." 

The  very  night  of  their  organization,  according  to  the  his- 
tories, or   three   nights   later,  according  to   my  friend   Mr. 

A ,  the  work  of  the  Committee  began.     Some  boatmen  at 

Central  Wharf  saw  something  which  led  them  to  follow  out 
into  the  Yerba  Buena  cove  a  man,  whom  they  captured  after 
a  sharp  row.  As  they  overhauled  him,  he  threw  overboard  a 
safe,  just  stolen  from  a  bank,  but  this  was  soon  fished  out. 
He  was  at  once  carried  off  to  the  committee-room  of  the  Vig- 
ilants,  and  the  bell  of  the  Monumental  Engine  Company  struck 
at  intervals,  as  the  rule  prescribed.  Not  only  the  Committee, 
but  a  vast  sui-ging  crowd  collected,  although  midnight  was 

now  past.     A was  on  the  Plaza,  and  says  that  every  man 

was  armed,  and  evidently  disposed  to  back  up  the  Committee. 
According  to  the  Alta  California,  the  chief  of  the  police  came 
up  a  little  before  1  a.m.,  and  tried  to  force  an  entrance  to  the 
room ;  but  he  was  met,  politely  enough,  with  a  show  of  re- 
volvers sufficient  to  annihilate  his  men,  so  he  judged  it  pru- 
dent to  retreat. 

At  one  o'clock  the  bell  of  the  engine-house  began  to  toll, 
and  the  crowd  became  excited.  Mr.  Brannan  came  out  of  the 
r ommittee-room,  and,  standing  on  a  mound  of  sand,  addressed 
the  citizens.     As  well  as  my  friend  could  remember,  his  words 


Lynch- Law.  171 

wore  these  :  "  Gentlemen,  the  man — Jenkins  by  name — a  Syd- 
ney convict,  whose  supposed  offense  you  know,  has  had  a  fair 
trial  before  eighty  gentlemen,  and  been  \inanimously  found 
guilty  by  them.  I  have  been  deputed  by  the  Committee  to 
ask  whether  it  is  your  pleasure  that  he  be  hanged."  "  Ay  !" 
from  every  man  in  the  crowd.  "  He  will  be  given  an  hour  to 
prepare  for  death,  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Mines  has  been  already 
sent  for  to  minister  to  him.  Is  this  your  pleasure  ?"  Again 
a  storm  of  "  Ay  !"  Nothing  was  known  in  the  crowd  of  the 
details  of  the  trial,  except  that  counsel  had  been  heard  on  the 
prisoner's  behalf.  For  another  hour  the  excitement  of  the 
crowd  was  permitted  to  continue,  but  at  two  o'clock  the  doors 
of  the  committee-room  were  thrown  open,  and  Jenkins  was 

seen  smoking  a  cigar.     Mr.  A said  that  he  did  not  believe 

the  prisoner  expected  a  rescue,  but  thought  that  an  exhibition 
of  pluck  might  make  him  popular  with  the  crowd,  and  save 
him.  A  procession  of  Vigilants  Avith  drawn  Colts  was  then 
formed,  and  set  off  in  the  moonlight  across  the  four  chief 
streets  to  the  Plaza.  Some  of  the  people  shouted  "  To  the 
flag-staff !"  but  there  came  a  cry,  "  Don't  desecrate  the  Lib- 
erty pole.  To  the  old  adobe  !  the  old  adobe  !"  and  to  the  old 
adobe  custom-house  the  prisoner  was  dragged.  In  five  min- 
utes he  was  hanging  from  the  roof,  three  hundred  citizens 

lending  a  hand  at  the  rope.     At  six  in  the  morning  A 

went  home,  but  he  heard  that  the  police  cut  down  the  body 
about  that  time,  and  carried  it  to  the  coroner's  house. 

An  inquest  was  held  next  day.  The  city  officers  swore 
that  they  had  done  all  they  could  to  prevent  the  execution, 
but  they  refused  to  give  up  the  names  of  the  Vigilance  Com- 
mittee. The  members  themselves  wTere  less  cautious.  Mr. 
Brannan  and  others  came  forward  of  their  own  proper  motion, 
and  disclosed  all  the  circumstances  of  the  trial.  One  hundred 
and  forty  of  the  Committee  backed  them  up  by  a  written  prot- 
estation against  interference  with  the  Vigilants,  to  which  their 
signatures  were  appended.  Protest  and  evidence  have  been 
published,  not  only  in  the  newspapers  of  the  time,  but  in  the 
San  Francisco  "  Annals."  The  coroner's  jury  found  a  verdict 
of  "  Strangulation,  consequent  on  the  concerted  action  of  a  body 
of  citizens  calling  themselves  a  Committee  of  Vigilance."  An 
hour  after  the  verdict  was  given,  a  mass  meeting  of  the  whole 


172  Greater  Britain. 

of  the  respectable  inhabitants  was  held  in  the  Plaza,  and  a 
resolution  approving  of  the  action  of  the  Committee  passed  by 
acclamation. 

In  July,  1851,  the  Committee  hanged  another  man  on  the 
Market  Street  wharf,  and  appointed  a  sub-committee  of  thirty 
to  board  every  ship  that  crossed  the  bar,  seize  all  persons  sus- 
pected of  being  "  Sydney  coves,"  and  reship  them  to  New 
South  Wales. 

In  August  came  the  great  struggle  between  the  Vigilants 
and  constituted  authority.  It  was  sharp  and  decisive.  Whit- 
taker  and  M'Kenzie,  two  "  Sydney  coves,"  were  arrested  by 
the  Committee  for  various  crimes,  and  sentenced  to  death. 
The  next  day  Sheriff  Hayes  seized  them,  on  a  writ  of  habeas 
corpus,  in  the  rooms  of  the  Committee.  The  bell  was  tolled, 
the  citizens  assembled,  the  Vigilants  told  their  story,  the  men 
were  seized  once  more,  and  by  noon  they  were  hanging  from 
the  loft  of  the  committee-house  by  the  ordinary  lifting-tackle 
for  heavy  goods.     Fifteen  thousand  people  were  present,  and 

approved.     "  After  this,"    said  A ,  "  there  could  be  no 

mistake  about  the  citizens  supporting  the  Committee." 

By  September  the  Vigilants  had  transported  all  the  "coves" 
on  whom  they  could  lay  hands  ;  so  they  issued  a  proclamation, 
declaring  that  for  the  future  they  would  confine  themselves  to 
aiding  the  law  by  tracing  out  and  guarding  criminals  ;  and  in 
pursuance  of  their  decision,  they  soon  afterward  helped  the 
authorities  in  preventing  the  lynching  of  a  ship-captain  for  cru- 
elty to  his  men. 

After  the  great  sweep  of  1851,  things  became  steadily  worse 
again  till  they  culminated  in  1 855 — a  year  to  which  my  friend 
looked  back  with  horror.  Not  counting  Indians,  there  were 
fourbundrcd  persons  died  by  violence  in  California  in  that  sin- 
gle year.  Fifty  of  these  were  lynched,  a  dozen  were  hanged 
by  law,  a  couple  of  dozen  shot  by  the  sheriffs  and  tax-collect- 
ors in  the  course  of  their  duty.  The  officers  did  not  escape 
scot-free.  The  under-sheriff  of  San  Francisco  was  shot  in 
Mission  Street  in  broad  daylight  by  a  man  upon  whom  he 
was  trying  to  execute  a  writ  of  ejectment. 

Judges,  mayors,  supervisors,  politicians,  all  were  bad  alike. 
The  merchants  of  the  city  were  from  New  England,  New 
York,  and  foreign  lands  ;  but  the  men  who  assumed  the  di- 


Lynch -Law.  173 

reetion  of  public  affairs,  and  especially  of  public  funds,  were 
Southerners,  many  of  them  "Border  Ruffians"  of  the  moal 
savage  stamp — "Pikes,"  as  they  were  called,  from  Pik< 
County,  in  Missouri,  from  which  their  leaders  came.  Instead 
of  banding  themselves  together  to  oppose  the  laws,  these 
rogues  and  ruffians  found  it  easier  to  control  the  making  of 
them.  Their  favorite  method  of  defeating  their  New  England 
foes  was  by  the  simple  plan  of  "  stuffing,"  or  filling  the  ballot- 
box  with  forged  tickets  when  the  elections  were  concluded. 
Two  Irishmen — Casey  and  Sullivan — were  their  tools  in  this 
shameful  work.  Werth,  a  Southerner,  the  leader  of  Casey's 
gang,  had  been  denounced  in  the  San  Francisco  Bulletin  as 
the  murderer  of  a  man  named  Kittering ;  and  Casey,  meeting 
James  King,  editor  of  the  Bulletin,  shot  him  dead  in  Mont- 
gomery Street  in  the  middle  of  the  day.  Casey  and  one  of 
his  assistants — a  man  named  Cora — were  hanged  by  the  peo- 
ple as  Mr.  King's  body  was  being  carried  to  the  grave,  and 
Sullivan  committed  suicide  the  same  day. 

Books  were  opened  for  the  enrollment  of  the  names  of 
those  who  were  prepared  to  support  the  Committee :  nine  thou- 
sand grown  white  males  inscribed  themselves  within  four  days. 
Governor  Johnson  at  once  declared  that  he  should  suppress 
the  Committee,  but  the  city  of  Sacramento  prevented  this 
course  by  offering  a  thousand  men  for  the  Vigilants'  support, 
the  other  Californian  cities  following  suit.  The  Committee 
got  together  6000  stand  of  arms  and  thirty  cannon,  and  for- 
tified their  rooms  with  earth-works  and  barricades.  The  gov- 
ernor, having  called  on  the  general  commanding  the  Federal 
forces  at  Benicia,  who  wisely  refused  to  interfere,  marched 
upon  the  city,  Avas  surrounded,  and  taken  prisoner,  with  all 
his  forces,  without  the  striking  of  a  blow. 

Having  now  obtained  the  control  of  the  State  government, 
the  Committee  proceeded  to  banish  all  the  "  Pikes "  and 
"  Pukes."  Four  were  hanged,  forty  transported,  and  many  ran 
away.  This  done,  the  Committee  prepared  an  elaborate  re- 
port upon  the  property  and  finances  of  the  State,  and  then, 
after  a  great  parade,  ten  regiments  strong,  upon  the  Plaza 
and  through  the  streets,  they  adjourned  forever,  and  "  the 
thirty-three  "  and  their  ten  thousand  backers  retired  into  pri- 
vate life  once  more,  and  put  an  end  to  this  singular  spectacle 


174  Greater  Britain. 

of  the  rebellion  of  a  free  people  against  rulers  nominally  elect- 
ed by  itself.  As  my  friend  said,  when  he  finished  his  long 
yarn,  "  This  has  more  than  archseologic  interest :  we  may 
live  to  see  a  similar  Vigilance  Committee  in  New  York." 

For  my  own  part,  I  do  not  believe  that  an  uprising  against 
bad  government  is  possible  in  New  York  City,  because  there 
the  supporters  of  bad  government  are  a  majority  of  the  peo- 
ple. Their  interest  is  the  other  way  :  in  increased  city  taxes, 
they  evidently  lose  far  more  than,  as  a  class,  they  gain  by 
what  is  spent  among  them  in  corruption ;  but  when  they 
come  to  see  this,  they  will  not  rebel  against  their  corrupt 
leaders,  but  elect  those  whom  they  can  trust.  In  San  Fran- 
cisco the  case  was  widely  different :  through  the  ballot  frauds 
a  majority  of  the  citizens  were  being  infamously  misgoverned 
by  a  contemptible  minority,  and  the  events  of  1856  were  only 
the  necessary  acts  of  the  majority  to  regain  their  power, 
coupled  with  certain  exceptional  acts  of  arbitrary  transporta- 
tion of  "Pikes"  and  Southern  rowdies,  justified  by  the  ex- 
ceptional circumstances  of  the  young  community.  At  Mel- 
bourne, under  circumstances  somewhat  similar,  our  English 
colonists,  instead  of  setting  up  a  committee,  built  Pentridge 
Stockade  with  walls  some  thirty  feet  high,  and  created  a  mil- 
itary police,  with  almost  arbitraiy  power.  The  difference  is 
one  in  terms.  The  whirl  of  life  in  a  young  gold  country  not 
only  prevents  the  best  men  entering  the  political  field,  and  so 
forces  citizens  to  exercise  their  right  of  choice  only  between 
candidates  of  equal  badness,  but  so  engrosses  the  members  of 
the  community  who  exercise  the  ballot  as  to  prevent  the  de- 
tection of  fraud  till  it  has  ruled  for  years.  Throughout 
young  countries  generally  you  find  men  say,  "  Yes,  Ave're  rob- 
bed, we  know ;  but  no  one  has  time  to  go  into  that."  "  I'm 
for  the  old  men,"  said  a  Californian  elector  once,  "  for 
they've  plundered  us  so  long  that  they're  gorged,  and  can't 
swallow  any  more."  "  No,"  said  another,  "  let's  have  fresh 
blood.  Give  every  man  a  chance  of  robbing  the  State. 
Share  and  share  alike."  The  wonder  is,  not  that  in  such  a 
State  as  California  was  till  lately  the  machinery  of  government 
should  Avork  unevenly,  but  that  it  should  Avork  at  all.  De- 
mocracy has  never  endured  so  rough  a  test  as  that  from  which 
it  has  triumphantly  emerged  in  the  Golden  State  and  City. 


Lynch  -.law.  175 

The  public  spirit  with  which  the  merchants  came  forward 
and  gave  time  and  money  to  the  cause  of  order  is  worthy  of 
all  praise,  and  the  rapidity  with  which  the  organization  of  a 
new  government  was  carried  through  is  an  instance  of  the 
singular  power  of  our  race  for  building  up  the  machinery  of 
self-government  under  conditions  the  most  unpromising.  In- 
stead of  the  events  of  1856  having  been  a  case  of  opposition 
to  law  and  order,  they  will  stand  in  history  as  a  remarkable 
proof  of  the  law-abiding  character  of  a  people  who  vindicated 
justice  by  a  demonstration  of  overwhelming  force,  laid  down 
their  arms,  and  returned  in  a  few  weeks  to  the  peaceable 
routine  of  business  life. 

If  in  the  merchant-founders  of  the  Vigilance  Committees 
of  San  Francisco  we  can  see  the  descendants  of  the  justice- 
loving  Germans  of  the  time  of  Tacitus,  I  found  in  another 
class  of  vigilants  the  moral  offspring  of  Alfred's  village  al- 
dermen of  our  own  Saxon  age.  From  Mr.  "William  M.  By- 
ers,  now  editor  of  the  lloefaj  Mountain  JVews,  I  had  heard 
the  story  of  the  early  settlers'  land-law  in  Missouri ;  in  Stan- 
ton's office  in  Denver  City  I  had  seen  the  records  of  the 
Arapahoe  County  Claim-club,  with  which  he  had  been  con- 
nected at  the  first  settlement  of  Colorado  ;  but  at  San  Jose  I 
heard  details  of  the  settlers*  custom-law  —  the  Calif ornian 
"  grand-coutumier,"  it  might  be  called — which  convinced  me 
that,  in  order  to  find  the  rudiments  of  all  that,  politically 
speaking,  is  best  and  most  vigorous  in  the  Saxon  mind,  you 
must  seek  countries  in  which  Saxon  civilization  itself  is  in  its 
infancy.  The  greater  the  difficulties  of  the  situation,  the 
more  racy  the  custom,  the  more  national  the  law. 

When  a  new  State  began  to  be  "  settled  up  " — that  is,  its 
lands  entered  upon  by  actual  settlers,  not  land-sharks — the  in- 
habitants often  found  themselves  in  the  wilderness,  far  in  ad- 
vance of  attorneys,  courts,  and  judges.  It  was  their  custom 
when  this  occurred  to  divide  the  territory  into  districts  of 
fifteen  or  twenty  miles  square,  and  form  for  each  a  "  claim- 
club  "  to  protect  the  land-claims,  or  property  of  the  members. 
Whenever  a  question  of  title  arose,  a  judge  and  jury  were 
chosen  from  among  the  members  to  hear  and  determine  the 
case.  The  occupancy  title  was  invariably  protected  up  to  a 
certain  number  of  acres,  which  was  differently  fixed  by  differ- 


176  Greater  Britain. 

ent  clubs,  and  vai'ied  in  those  of  which  I  have  heard  the  rules 
from  100  to  250  acres,  averaging  150.     The  United  States 
"  Homestead  "  and  "  Pre-emption  "  laws  were  founded  on  the 
practice  of  these  clubs.     The  claim-clubs  interfered  only  for  the 
protection  of  their  members,  but  they  never  scrupled  to  hang 
willful  offenders  against  their  rules,  whether  members  or  out- 
siders.    Execution  of  the  decrees  of  the  club  was  generally 
left  to  the  county  sheriff,  if  he  was  a  member,  and  in  this  case 
a  certain  air  of  legality  was  given  to  the  local  action.     It  is 
perhaps  not  too  much  to  say  that  a  Western  sheriff  is  an  ir- 
responsible official,  possessed  of  gigantic  powers,  but  seldom 
known  to  abuse  them.     He  is  a  Caesar,  chosen  for  his  honesty, 
fearlessness,  clean  shooting,  and  quick  loading,  by  men  who 
know  him  well :  if  he  breaks  down,  he  is  soon  deposed,  and  a 
better  man  chosen  for  dictator.     I  have  known  a  Western  pa- 
per say, "  Frank  is  our  man  for  sheriff  next  October.     See  the 
way  he  shot  one  of  the  fellows  who  robbed  his  store,  and  fol- 
low up  the  other,  and  shot  him  too  the  next  day.     Frank  is 
the  boy  for  us."     In  such  a  state  of  society  as  this,  the  dis- 
tinction between  law  and  Lynch-law  can  scarcely  be  said  to 
exist,  and  in  the  eyes  of  every  Western  settler,  the  claim-club, 
backed  by  the  sheriff's  name,  was  as  strong  and  as  full  of  the 
majesty  of  the  law  as  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States. 
Mr.  Byers  told  me  of  a  case  of  the  infliction  of  death-punish- 
ment by  a   claim-club  which  occurred  in  Kansas  after  the 
"  Homestead  "  law  was  passed,  allowing  the  occupant,  when 
he  had  tilled  and  improved  the  land  for  five  years,  to  purchase 
it  at  one  dollar  and  a  quarter  an  acre.     A  man  settled  on  a 
piece  of  land,  and  labored  on  it  for  some  years.      He  then 
"  sold  it,"  which  he  had,  of  course,  no  power  to  do,  the  land 
being  still  the  property  of  the  United  States.     Having  done 
this,  he  went  and  "  pre-empted  "  it  under  the  Homestead  Act 
at  the  government  price.     When  he  attempted  to  eject  the 
man  to  whom  he  had  assumed  to  sell,  the  club  ordered  the 
sheriff  to  "  put  the  man  away,"  and  he  was  never  seen  again. 
Perhaps  Mr.  Byers  was  the  sheriff  ;  he  seemed  to  have  the  de- 
tails at  his  fingers'  ends,  and  his  later  history  in  Denver,  where 
he  once  had  the  lynching-rope  round  his  neck  for  exposing 
gamblers,  testifies  to  his  boldness. 

Some  of  the  rascalities  which  the  claim-clubs  were  expect- 


Lynch -Law,  177 

ed  to  put  down  -were  ingenious  enough.     Sometimes  a  man 
would  build  a  dozen  houses  on  a  block  of  land,  and,  going 
there  to  enter  on  possession  after  they  were  complete,  would 
find  that  in  the  night  the  whole  of  them  had  disappeared. 
Frauds  under  the  Homestead  Act  were  both  many  and  strange. 
Men  were  required  to  prove  that  they  had  on  the  land  a  house 
of  at  least  ten  feet  square.     They  have  been  known  to  whittle 
out  a  toy-house  with  their  bowie,  and  carrying  it  to  the  land, 
to  measure  it  in  the  presence  of  a  friend — twelve  inches  by 
thirteen.     In  court,  the  pre-emptor,  examining  his  own  wit- 
ness, would  say,  "  "What  are  the  dimensions  of  that  house  of 
mine  ?"     "  Twelve  by  thirteen."     "  That  will  do."    In  Kansas, 
a  log-house  of  the  regulation  size  was  fitted  up  on  wheels,  and 
let  at  ten  dollars  a  day,  in  order  that  it  might  be  wheeled  on 
to  different  lots,  to  be  sworn  to  as  a  house  upon  the  land. 
Men  have  been  known  to  make  a  window-sash  and  frame,  and 
keep  them  inside  of  their  windowless  huts,  to  swear  that  they 
had  a  window  in  their  house — another  of  the  requirements  of 
the  act.     It  is  a  singular  mark  of  deference  to  the  traditions 
of  a  Puritan   ancestry  that  such  accomplished  liars  as  the 
Western  land-sharks  should  feel  it  necessary  to  have  any  foun- 
dation whatever  for  their  lies ;  but  not  only  in  this  respect 
are  they  a  curious  race.     One  of  their  peculiarities  is  that, 
however  wealthy  they  may  be,  they  will  never  place  their 
money  out  at  interest,  never  sink  it  in  a  speculation,  however 
tempting,  when  there  is   no  prospect  of  almost  immediate 
realization.     To  turn  their  money  over  often,  at  whatever  risk, 
is  with  these  men  an  axiom.    The  advance-guard  of  civilization, 
they  push  out  into  an  unknown  wilderness,  and  seize  upon 
the  available  lots,  the  streams,  the  springs,  the  river  bottoms, 
the  falls  or  "  water  pi'ivileges,"  and  then,  using  their  interest 
in  the  territorial  Legislature — using,  perhaps,  direct  corrup- 
tion in  some  cases — they  procure  the  location  of  the  State 
capital  upon  their  lands,  or  the  passage  of  the  railroads  through 
their  valleys.     The  capital  of  Nebraska  has  been  fixed  in  this 
manner  at  a  place  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  from  the  near- 
est settlement.     A  newspaper  appeared  suddenly,  dated  from 
"  Lincoln  City,  centre  of  Nebraska  Territory,"  but  published 
in  reality  in  Omaha.     To  cope  with  such  fellows,  Western 
sheriffs  need  be  no  ordinary  men. 

112 


178  Greater  Britain. 

Thanks  to  the  Vigilance  Committees,  California  stands 
now  before  the  other  Far-western  States.  Rowdyism  is  be- 
ing put  down  as  the  God-fearing  Northerners  gain  ground. 
It  may  still  be  dangerous  to  stroke  your  beard  in  a  bar-room 
at  Placerville  or  El  Dorado ;  "  a  gentleman  in  the  loafing  and 
chancing  line  "  may  still  be  met  with  in  Sacramento  ;  here  and 
there  a  Missourian  "  Pike,"  as  yet  unhung,  may  boast  that  he 
can  whip  his  weight  in  wild-cats,  but  San  Francisco  has  at 
least  reached  the  age  of  outward  decorum,  has  shut  up  public 
gaming-houses,  and  supports  four  Church  papers. 

In  Colorado  Lynch-law  is  not,  as  yet,  forgotten :  the  day 
we  entered  Denver  the  editor  of  the  Gazette  expressed,  "  on 
historical  grounds,1'  his  deep  regret  at  the  cutting  down  of 
two  fine  cottonwood-trees  that  stood  on  Cherry  Creek.  When 
we  came  to  talk  to  him  Ave  found  that  the  "  history  "  alluded 
to  was  that  of  the  "  escape  up  "  these  trees  of  many  an  early 
inhabitant  of  Denver  City.  "  There's  the  tree  we  used  to  put 
the  jury  under,  and  that's  the  one  we  hanged  'em  on.  Put  a 
cart  under  the  tree,  and  the  boy  standing  on  it,  with  the  rope 
around  him  ;  give  him  time  for  a  pray,  then  smack  the  whip, 
and  thei-'  you  air." 

In  Denver  we  were  reserved  upon  the  subject  of  Vigilance 
Committees,  for  it  is  dangerous  sometimes  to  make  close  in- 
quiries as  to  their  constitution.  While  I  was  in  Leavenworth, 
a  man  was  hanged  by  the  mob  at  Council  Bluffs  for  asking  the 
names  of  the  Vigilants  who  had  hanged  a  friend  of  his  the 
year  before.  We  learned  enough,  however,  at  Denver  to  show 
that  the  Committee  in  that  city  still  exists ;  and  in  Virginia 
and  Carson  I  know  that  the  organizations  are  continued ;  but 
offenders  are  oftener  shot  quietly  than  publicly  hanged, In  or- 
der to  prevent  an  outciy,  and  avoid  the  vengeance  of  the  rela- 
tives. The  verdict  of  the  jury  never  fails  to  be  respected,  but 
acquittal  is  almost  as  unknown  as  mercy  to  those  convicted. 
Innocent  men  are  seldom  tried  before  such  juries,  for  the  case 
must  be  clear  before  the  sheriff  will  run  the  risk  of  being  shot 
in  making  the  arrest.  When  the  man's  fate  is  settled,  the 
sheriff  drives  out  quietly  in  his  buggy,  and  next  day  men  say, 

when  they  meet,  "  Poor 's  escaped ;"  or  else  it  is  "  The 

sheriff's  shot.     Who'll  run  for  office?" 

It  will  be  seen,  from  the  history  of  the  Vigilance  Commit- 


Golden  City.  179 

tees,  as  I  heard  their  stories  from  Kansas  to  California,  that 
they  are  to  be  divided  into  two  classes,  with  sharply-marked 
characteristics :  those  where  committees,  hangings,  transporta- 
tions, warnings,  are  alike  open  to  the  light  of  day,  such  as  the 
Committees  of  San  Francisco  in  1856,  and  the  Sandwich  Isl- 
ands in  1866,  and  those — unhappily  the  vast  majority — where 
all  is  secret  and  irresponsible.  Here,  in  San  Francisco,  the 
Committee  was  the  government ;  elsewhere  the  organizations 
were  less  wide,  and  the  members,  though  always  shrewdly  guess- 
ed at,  never  known.  Neither  class  should  be  necessary,  unless 
when  a  gold  rush  brings  down  upon  a  State  the  desperadoes 
of  the  world ;  but  there  is  this  encouragement  even  in  the  his- 
tory of  Lynch-law:  that,  although  English  settlements  often 
start  wild,  they  never  have  been  known  to  go  wild. 

The  men  who  formed  the  second  Vigilance  Committee  of 
San  Francisco  are  now  the  governor,  senators,  and  Congress- 
men of  California,  the  mayors  and  sheriffs  of  our  towns. 
Nowadays  the  citizens  are  remarkable,  even  among  Americans, 
for  their  love  of  law  and  order.  Their  city,  though  still  sub- 
ject to  a  yearly  deluge  from  the  outpourings  of  all  the  over- 
crowded slums  of  Europe,  is,  as  the  New  Yorker  said,  the  best 
policed  in  all  America.  In  politics,  too,  it  is  remarked  that 
party  organizations  have  no  power  in  this  State  from  the  mo- 
ment that  they  attempt  to  nominate  corrupt  or  time-serving 
men.  The  people  break  loose  from  their  caucuses  and  con- 
ventions, and  vote  in  a  body  for  their  honest  enemies  rather 
than  for  corrupt  friends.  They  have  the  advantage  of  singu- 
lar ability,  for  there  is  not  an  average  man  in  California. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

GOLDEN"  CITY. 


The  first  letter  which  I  delivered  in  San  Francisco  was 
from  a  Mormon  gentleman  to  a  merchant,  who,  as  he  read  it, 
exclaimed,  "  Ah  !  so  you  want  to  see  the  lions  ?  I'll  pick  you 
up  at  three,  and  take  you  there?  I  wondered,  but  went,  as 
travellers  do. 

At  the  end  of  a  pleasant  drive  along  the  best  road  in  all 


180  Greater  Britain. 

America,  I  found  myself  upon  a  cliff  overhanging  the  Pacific, 
with  a  glorious  outlook,  seaward  toward  the  Farallones,  and 
northward  to  Cape  Benita  and  the  Golden  Gate.  Beneath,  a 
few  hundred  yards  from  shore,  was  a  conical  rock,  covered 
with  shapeless  monsters,  plashing  the  water  and  roaring  cease- 
lessly, while  others  swam  around.  These  were  "  the  lions," 
my  acquaintance  said — the  sea-lions.  I  did  not  enter  upon  an 
explanation  of  our  slang  phrase,  "  the  lions,"  which  the  Mor- 
mon, himself  an  Englishman,  no  doubt  had  used,  but  took  the 
first  opportunity  of  seeing  the  remainder  of  "  the  lions  "of  the 
Golden  City. 

The  most  remarkable  spot  in  all  America  is  Mission  Dolo- 
res, in  the  outskirts  of  San  Francisco  City — once  a  settlement 
of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  and  now  partly  blanket-factory  and 
partly  church.  Nowhere  has  the  conflict  between  the  Saxon 
and  Latin  races  been  so  sharp  and  so  decisive.  For  eighty  or 
ninety  years  California  was  first  old  Spanish,  then  Mexican, 
then  a  half-independent  Spanish-American  republic.  The 
progress  of  those  ninety  years  was  shown  in  the  foundation 
of  half  a  dozen  Jesuit  "  missions,"  who  held  each  of  them  a 
thousand  or  two  tame  Indians  as  slaves,  Avhile  a  few  military 
settlers  and  their  friends  divided  the  interior  with  the  savage 
tribes.  Gold,  which  had  been  discovered  here  by  Drake,  was 
never  sought :  the  fathers,  like  the  Mormon  chiefs,  discouraged 
mining;  it  interfered  with  their  "tame"  Indians.  Here  and 
there,  in  four  cases,  perhaps  in  all,  a  presidio,  or  castle,  had 
been  built  for  the  protection  of  the  mission,  and  a  puebla,  or 
tiny  free  town,  had  been  suffered  to  grow  up,  not  withoiit  re- 
monstrance from  the  fathers.  Los  Angeles  had  thus  sprung 
from  the  mission  of  that  name,  the  fishing-village  of  Ycrba 
Buena  from  Mission  Dolores,  on  the  Bay  of  San  Francisco, 
and  San  Jose  from  Santa  Clara. 

In  1846,  Fremont,  the  Pathfinder,  conquered  the  country 
with  forty-two  men,  and  now  it  has  a  settled  population  of 
nearly  half  a  million ;  and  San  Francisco  is  as  large  as  New- 
castle or  Hull,  as  flourishing  as  Liverpool,  and  the  Saxon  blank- 
et-factory has  replaced  the  Spanish  mission. 

The  story  might  have  served  as  a  warning  to  the  French 
Emperor  when  he  sent  ships  and  men  to  found  a  "  Latin  em- 
pire in  America." 


Golden  City.  181 

Between  the  presidio  and  the  Mission  Dolores  lies  Lone 
Mountain  Cemetery,  in  that  solitary  calm  and  majesty  of  beau- 
ty which  befits  a  home  for  the  dead,  the  most  lovely  of  all  the 
cemeteries  of  America.  Queen  Emma,  of  the  Sandwich  Isl- 
ands, who  is  here  at  present,  said  of  it  yesterday  to  a  Califor- 
nian  merchant,  "  How  comes  it  that  you  Americans,  who  live 
so  fast,  find  time  to  bury  your  dead  so  beautifully  ?" 

Lone  Mountain  is  not  the  only  delicious  spot  that  is  given 
up  to  the  American  dead.  Laurel  Hill,  Mount  Auburn,  Green- 
wood, Cypress  Grove,  Hollywood,  Oak  Hill,  are  names  not 
more  full  of  poetry  than  are  the  places  to  which  they  belong: 
but  Lone  Mountain  has  over  all  an  advantage  in  its  giant 
fuchsias  and  scarlet  geraniums,  of  the  size  and  shape  of  frees, 
in  the  distant  glimpses,  too,  of  the  still  Pacific. 

San  Francisco  is  ill  placed,  so  far  as  mere  building  facilities 
are  concerned.  When  the  first  houses  were  built  in  1845  and 
1846,  they  stood  on  a  strip  of  beach  surrounding  the  sheltered 
cove  of  Yerba  Buena,  and  at  the  foot  of  the  steep  and  lofty 
sand-hills.  Dunes  and  cove  have  disappeared  together;  the 
hills  have  been  shot  bodily  into  the  bay,  and  the  former  har- 
bor is  noAV  the  business  quarter  of  the  city.  Not  a  street 
can  be  built  without  cutting  down  a  hill  or  filling  up  a  glen. 
Never  was  a  great  town  built  under  heavier  difficulties ;  but 
trade  requires  it  to  be  exactly  where  it  is,  and  there  it  will  re- 
main and  grow.  Its  former  rivals,  Vallejo  and  Benicia,  are 
grass-grown  villages,  in  spite  of  their  having  had  the  advan- 
tage of  "a  perfect  situation."  While  the  spot  on  which  the 
Golden  City  stands  was  still  occupied  by  the  struggling  vil- 
lage of  Yerba  Buena,  Francisca  was  a  rising  city,  where  cor- 
ner lots  were  worth  their  ten  or  twenty  thousand  dollars. 
When  the  gold-rush  came,  the  village,  shooting  to  the  front, 
voted  itself  the  name  of  its  great  bay,  and  Francisca  had  to 
change  its  title  to  Benicia,  in  order  not  to  be  thought  a  mere 
suburb  of  San  Francisco.  The  mouth  of  the  Columbia  was 
once  looked  to  as  the  future  haven  of  Western  America,  and 
point  of  convergence  of  the  railroad  lines ;  but  the  "  centre 
of  the  universe  "  has  not  more  completely  removed  from  In- 
dependence to  Fort  Riley,  than  Astoria  has  yielded  to  San 
Francisco  the  claim  to  be  the  port  of  the  Pacific. 

The  one  great  danger  of  this  coast  all  its  cities  share  in 


182  G  HEATER    BllITAIX. 

common.  Three  times  within  the  present  century  the  spot  on 
which  San  Francisco  now  stands  lias  been  violently  disturb- 
ed by  subterranean  forces.  The  earthquake  of  last  year  has 
left  its  mark  upon  Montgomery  Street  and  the  Plaza,  for  it 
frightened  the  San  Franciscans  into  putting  up  light  wooden 
cornices  to  hotels  and  banks,  instead  of  the  massive  stone  pro- 
jections that  are  common  in  the  States:  otherwise,  though 
lesser  shocks  are  daily  matters,  the  San  Franciscans  have  for- 
gotten the  "  great  scare."  A  year  is  a  longtime  in  California. 
There  is  but  little  of  the  earliest  San  Francisco  left,  though 
the  city  is  only  eighteen  years  old.  Fires  have  done  good 
work  as  well  as  harm,  and  it  is  worth  a  walk  up  to  the  Plaza 
to  see  how  prim  and  starched  are  the  houses  which  now  oc- 
cupy a  square  three  sides  of  which  were,  in  1850,  given  up  to 
public  gaming-hells. 

One  of  the  few  remaining  bits  of  old  Golden  City  life  is  to 
be  found  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  "  "What  Cheer  House," 
the  resting-place  of  diggers  on  their  way  from  the  interior  to 
take  ship  for  New  York  or  Europe.  Here  there  is  no  lack  of 
coin,  no  want  of  oaths,  no  scarcity  of  drinks.  "  Mint-juleps" 
are  as  plentiful  as  in  Baltimore  itself ;  Yerba  Bnena,  the  old 
name  for  San  Francisco,  means  "mint." 

If  the  old  character  of  the  city  is  gone,  there  are  still  odd 
scenes  to  be  met  with  in  its  streets.  To-day  I  saw  a  master- 
builder  of  great  wealth,  with  his  coat  and  waistcoat  off,  and 
his  hat  stowed  away  on  one  side,  carefully  teaching  a  raw 
Irish  lad  how  to  lay  a  brick.  He  told  me  that  the  acquisition 
of  the  art  would  bring  the  man  an  immediate  rise  in  his 
wages  of  from  five  to  ten  shillings  a  day.  Unskilled  labor, 
Mexican  and  Chinese,  is  plentiful  enough,  but  white  artisans 
are  scarce.  The  want  of  servants  is  such  that  even  the 
wealthiest  inhabitants  live  with  their  wives  and  families  in  ho- 
tels, to  avoid  the  cost  and  trouble  of  an  establishment.  Those 
Avho  have  houses  pay  rough,  unkempt  Irish  girls  from  £6  to 
£$  a  month,  with  board,  "  outings  "  when  they  please,  and 
"  followers  "  unlimited. 

The  hotel-boarding  has  much  to  do  with  the  somewhat  un- 
womanly manner  of  a  few  among  the  ladies  of  the  neAvest 
States,  but  the  effect  upon  the  children  is  more  marked  than 
it  is  upon  their  mothers.     To  a  woman  of  wealth,  it  matters, 


Golden  City.  183 

perhaps,  but  little  whether  she  rules  a  household  of  her  own, 
or  boards  in  the  first  floor  of  some  gigantic  hostelry ;  but  it 
does  matter  a  great  deal  to  her  children,  who,  in  the  one  case, 
have  a  home  to  play  and  work  in,  and  who,  in  the  other,  play 
on  the  stairs  or  in  the  corridors,  to  the  annoyance  of  every  so- 
journer in  the  hotel,  and  never  dream  of  work  out  of  school- 
hours,  or  of  solid  reading  that  is  not  compulsory.  The  only 
one  of  the  common  charges  brought  against  America  in  En- 
glish society  and  in  English  books  and  papers  that  is  thorough- 
ly true  is  the  statement  that  American  children,  as  a  rule,  are 
"  forwai-d,"  ill-mannered,  and  immoral.  An  American  can 
scarcely  be  found  who  does  not  admit  and  deplore  the  facts. 
With  the  self-exposing  honesty  that  is  a  characteristic  of  their 
nation,  American  gentlemen  will  talk  by  the  hour  of  the  terri- 
ble profligacy  of  the  young  New  Yorkers.  Boys,  they  tell 
you,  who  in  England  would  be  safe  in  lower  school  at  Eton  or 
in  well-managed  houses,  in  New  York  or  New  Orleans  are 
deep  gamesters  and  God-defying  rowdies.  In  New  England 
things  are  better ;  in  the  West  there  is  yet  time  to  prevent 
the  ill  arising ;  but  even  in  the  most  old-fashioned  of  Ameri- 
can States  the  children  are  far  too  full  of  self-assurance. 
Their  faults  are  chiefly  faults  of  manner,  but  such  in  children 
have  a  tendency  to  become  so  many  vices.  On  my  way  home 
from  Egypt,  I  crossed  the  Simplon  with  a  Southerner  and  a 
Pennsylvanian  boy  of  fourteen  or  fifteen.  An  English  boy 
would  have  expressed  his  opinion,  and  been  silent:  this  lad's 
attacks  upon  the  poor  Southerner  were  unceasing  and  unfeel- 
ing, yet  I  could  see  that  he  was  good  at  bottom.  I  watched 
my  chance  to  give  him  my  view  of  his  conduct,  and  when  Ave 
parted,  he  came  up  and  shook  hands,  saying,  "  You're  not  a 
bad  fellow  for  a  Britisher,  after  all." 

In  my  walks  through  the  city,  I  found  its  climate  agree- 
able rather  for  work  than  idleness.  Sauntering  or  lounging 
is  as  little  possible  as  it  is  in  London.  The  summer  is  not  yet 
ended ;  and  in  the  summer  at  San  Francisco  it  is  cold  after 
eleven  in  the  day — strangely  cold  for  the  latitude  of  Athens. 
The  fierce  sun  scorches  up  the  valleys  of  the  San  Joaquin  and 
the  Sacramento  in  the  early  morning ;  and  the  heated  air,  ris- 
ing from  off  the  ground,  leaves  its  place  to  be  filled  by  the 
cold  breeze  from  the  Pacific.     The  Contra  Costa  ran^e  is  un- 


184:  Greater  Britain. 

broken  but  by  the  single  gap  of  the  Golden  Gate,  and  through 
this  opening  the  cold  winds  rush  in  a  never-ceasing  gale, 
spreading  fan-like  as  soon  as  they  have  passed  the  narrows. 
Hence  it  is  that  the  Golden  Gate  is  called  "The  Key-hole," 
and  the  wind  "The  Key-hole  Breeze."  Up  country  they 
make  it  raise  the  water  for  irrigation.  In  winter  there  is  a 
calm,  and  then  the  city  is  as  sunny  as  the  rest  of  California. 

So  purely  local  is  the  bitter  gale,  that  at  Benicia,  ten  miles 
from  San  Francisco,  the  mean  temperature  is  ten  degrees 
higher  for  the  year,  and  nearly  twenty  for  the  summer.  I 
have  stood  on  the  shore  at  Benicia  when  the  thermometer  was 
at  a  hundred  in  the  shade,  and  seen  the  clouds  pouring  in 
from  the  Pacific,  and  hiding  San  .Francisco  in  a  murky  pall, 
while  the  temperature  there  was  under  70  degrees.  This  fog 
retarded  by  a  hundred  years  the  discovery  of  San  Francisco 
Bay.  The  entrance  to  the  Golden  City  is  narrow,  and  the 
mists  hang  there  all  day.  Cabrillo,  Drake,  Viscaino,  sailed 
past  it  without  seeing  that  there  was  a  bay,  and  the  great 
land-locked  sea  was  first  beheld  by  white  men,  when  the  mis- 
sionaries came  upon  its  arms  and  creeks,  far  away  inland. 

The  peculiarity  of  climate  carries  with  it  great  advantages. 
It  is  never  too  hot,  never  too  cold  to  work — a  fact  which  of 
itself  secures  a  grand  future  for  San  Francisco.  The  effect 
upon  national  type  is  marked.  At  a  San  Franciscan  ball  you 
see  English  faces,  not  American.  Even  the  lean  Western  men 
and  hungry  Yankees  become  plump  and  rosy  in  this  temple 
of  the  winds.  The  high  metallic  ring  of  the  New  England 
voice  is  not  found  in  San  Francisco.  As  for  old  men,  Cali- 
fornia must  have  been  that  fabled  province  of  Cathay,  the  vir- 
tues of  which  Avere  such  that,  whatever  a  man's  age  when  he 
entered  it,  he  never  grew  older  by  a  day.  To  dogs  and 
strangers  there  are  drawbacks,  in  the  absence  of  winter  :  dogs 
are  muzzled  all  the  year  round,  and  musquitoes  are  perennial 
upon  the  coast. 

The  city  is  gay  with  flags ;  every  house  supports  a  liberty- 
pole  upon  its  roof;  for  when  the  Union  sentiment  sprang  up 
in  San  Francisco  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  public  opinion 
forced  every  citizen  to  make  a  conspicuous  exhibition  of  the 
stars  and  stripes  by  way  of  showing  that  it  was  from  no  want 
of  loyalty  that  they  refused  to  permit  the  circulation  of  Fed- 


Golden  City.  185 

eral  greenbacks.  In  this  matter  of  flags  the  sea-gale  is  of 
service;  for  were  it  not  for  its  friendly  assistance,  a  short 
house  between  two  tall  ones  could  not  sport  a  huge  flag  with 
much  effect.  As  it  is,  the  wind  always  blowing  across  the 
chief  streets,  and  never  up  or  down,  the  narrowest  and  lowest 
house  can  flaunt  a  large  ensign  without  fear  of  its  ever  flapping 
against  the  walls  of  its  proud  neighbors. 

It  is  not  only  in  i*osy  cheeks  that  the  Californian  English 
have  the  Old-world  type.  With  less  ingenuity  than  the  New 
England  Yankees,  they  have  far  more  depth  and  solidity  in 
their  enterprise ;  they  do  not  rack  their  brain  at  inventing 
machines  to  peel  apples  and  milk  cows,  but  they  intend  to  tun- 
nel through  the  mountains  to  Lake  Tahoe,  tap  it,  and  with  its 
waters  irrigate  the  Californian  plains.  They  share  our  British 
love  for  cash  payments  and  good  roads ;  they  one  and  all  set 
their  faces  against  repudiation  in  any  shape,  and  are  strongly 
for  what  they  call  "  rolling  xip  "  the  debt.  Throughout  the 
war  they  quoted  paper  as  depreciated,  not  gold  as  risen.  In- 
deed, there  is  here  the  same  unreasoning  prejudice  against 
paper-money  that  I  met  with  in  Nevada,  After  all,  what  can 
be  expected  of  a  State  which  still  produces  three-eighths  of  all 
the  gold  raised  yearly  in  the  world. 

San  Francisco  is  inhabited,  as  all  American  cities  bid  fair 
to  be,  by  a  mixed  throng  of  men  of  all  lands  beneath  the  sun. 
New  Englanders  and  Englishmen  predominate  in  energy, 
Chinese  in  numbers.  The  French  and  Italians  are  stronger 
here  than  in  any  other  city  in  the  States  ;  and  the  red-skinned 
Mexicans,  who  own  the  land,  supply  the  market-people  and  a 
small  proportion  of  the  towns-folk.  Australians,  Polynesians, 
and  Chilians  are  numerous ;  the  Germans  and  Scandinavians 
alone  are  few ;  they  prefer  to  go  where  they  have  already 
friends — to  Philadelphia  or  Milwaukee.  In  this  city — already 
a  microcosm  of  the  wTorld — the  English,  British,  and  Ameri- 
can are  in  possession — have  distanced  the  Irish,  beaten  down 
the  Chinese  by  force,  and  are  destined  to  physically  prepon- 
derate in  the  cross-breed,  and  give  the  tone,  political  and  mor- 
al, to  the  Pacific  shore.  New  York  is  Irish,  Philadelphia, 
German ;  Milwaukee,  Norwegian ;  Chicago,  Canadian ;  Sault 
de  St.  Marie,  French ;  but  in  San  Francisco  —  where  all  the 
foreign  races  are  strong — none  is  dominant ;  whence  the  sin- 


186  Greater  Britain. 

gular  result  that  California,  the  most  mixed  in  population,  is 
also  the  most  English  of  the  States. 

In  this  strange  community,  starting  more  free  from  the 
Puritan  influence  of  New  England  than  has  hitherto  done  any 
State  within  the  Union,  it  is  doubtful  what  religion  will  pre- 
dominate. Catholicism  is  "  not  fashionable  "  in  America — it 
is  the  creed  of  the  Irish,  and  that  is  enough  for  most  Ameri- 
cans ;  so  Anglicanism,  its  critics  say,  is  popular,  as  being  "  very 
proper."  Whatever  the  cause,  the  Episcopalian  Church  is 
flourishing  in  California,  and  it  seems  probable  that  the  Church 
which  gains  the  day  in  California  will  eventually  be  that  of 
the  whole  Pacific. 

In  Montgomery  Street  are  some  of  the  finest  buildings  in 
all  America ;  the  "  Occidental  Hotel,"  the  "  Masonic  Hall," 
the  "  Union  Club,"  and  others.  The  club  has  only  just  been 
rebuilt,  after  its  destruction  by  a  nitro-glycerine  explosion, 
which  occurred  in  the  express  office  next  door.  A  case,  of 
which  no  one  knew  the  contents,  Avas  being  lifted  by  two 
clerks,  when  it  exploded,  blowing  down  a  portion  of  the  club, 
and  breaking  half  the  windows  in  the  city.  On  examination, 
it  was  found  to  be  nitro-glycerine  on  its  way  to  the  mines. 

Another  accident  occurred  here  yesterday  with  this  same 
compound.  A  sharp  report  was  heard  on  board  a  ship  lying 
in  the  docks,  and  the  cook  was  found  dead  below;  pieces  of 
a  flask  had  been  driven  into  his  heart  and  lungs.  The  deposit 
on  the  broken  glass  was  examined,  and  found  to  be  common 
oil ;  but  this  morning  I  find  in  the  Alta  a  report  from  a  chem- 
ist that  traces  of  nitro-glycerine  have  been  discovered  by  him 
upon  the  glass,  and  a  statement  from  one  of  the  hands  says 
that  the  ship  on  her  way  tip  had  called  at  Manzanilla,  where 
the  cook  had  taken  the  flask  from  a  merchant's  office,  emptied 
it  of  its  contents,  the  character  of  which  was  unknown  to  him, 
and  filled  it  with  common  vegetable  oil. 

Since  the  great  explosion  at  Asp  in  wall,  nitro-glycerine  has 
been  the  nightmare  of  Californians.  For  earthquakes  they 
care  little ;  but  the  freaks  of  the  devilish  oil,  which  is  brought 
here  secretly  for  use  in  the  Nevada  mines,  have  made  them 
ready  to  swear  that  it  is  itself  a  demon.  They  tell  you  that 
it  freezes  every  night,  and  then  the  slightest  friction  will  ex- 
plode it — that,  on  the  other  hand,  it  goes  off  if  heated.     If 


Golden  City.  1S7 

you  leave  it  standing  in  ordinary  temperatures,  the  odds  arc 
that  it  undergoes  decomposition,  and  then,  if  you  touch  it,  it 
explodes ;  and  no  lapse  of  time  has  on  its  power  the  smallest 
deteriorating  effect,  but,  on  the  contrary,  the  oil  will  crystallize, 
and  then  its  strength  for  harm  is  multiplied  by  ten.  If  San 
Francisco  is  ever  destroyed  by  earthquake,  old  Calif ornians  will 
certainly  be  found  to  ascribe  the  shock  to  nitro-glycerine. 

A  day  or  two  after  my  return  from  Benicia  I  escaped  from 
the  city,  and  again  went  South,  halting  at  San  Jose,  "  The 
Garden  City,"  and  chief  town  of  the  fertile  Guadalupe  dis- 
trict, on  my  way  to  the  quicksilver  mines  of  New  Almaden, 
now  the  greatest  in  the  world,  since  they  have  beaten  the 
Spanish  mines  and  Idria.  From  San  Jose  I  drove  myself  to 
Almaden,  along  a  sun-dried  valley  with  a  fertile,  tawny  soil, 
reaching  the  delicious  mountain  stream,  and  the  groves  it 
feeds,  in  time  to  join  my  friends  at  lunch  in  the  shady  hacien- 
da. The  director  took  me  through  the  refining-works,  in 
which  the  quicksilver  may  be  seen  running  in  streams  down 
gutters  from  the  furnaces,  but  he  was  unable  to  go  with  me 
up  the  mountain  to  the  mines  from  which  the  cinnabar  comes 
shooting  down  by  its  weight.  The  superintendent  engineer 
■ — a  meerschaum-equipped  Bavarian — and  myself  mounted,  at 
the  Hacienda  Gate,  upon  our  savage-looking  beasts,  and  I 
found  myself  for  the  first  time  lost  in  the  depths  of  a  Mexican 
saddle,  and  my  feet  plunged  into  the  boot-stirrups  that  I  had 
seen  used  by  the  Utes  in  Denver.  The  riding-feats  of  the 
Mexicans  and  the  Californian  boys  are  explained  when  you 
find  that  their  saddle  puts  it  out  of  the  question  that  they 
should  be  thrown;  but  the  fatigue  that  its  size  and  shape 
cause  to  man  and  horse,  when  the  man  is  a  stranger  to  New 
Spain,  and  the  horse  knows  that  he  is  so,  outweighs  any  pos- 
sible advantages  that  it  may  possess.  With  their  huge  gilt 
spurs  attached  to  the  stirrup,  not  to  the  boot,  the  double 
peak,  and  the  embroidered  trappings,  the  Mexican  saddles  are 
the  perfection  at  once  of  the  cumbersome  and  the  picturesque. 

Silently  we. half  scrambled,  half  rode,  up  a  break-neck  path 
which  forms  a  short  cut  to  the  mine,  till  all  at  once  a  charge 
of  our  horses  at  an  almost  perpendicular  wall  of  rock  was  fol- 
lowed by  their  simultaneously  commencing  to  kick  and  back 
toward  the  cliff.     Springing  off,  we  found  that  the  girths  had 


18S  Greater  Britain. 

been  slackened  by  the  Mexican  groom,  and  that  the  steep  bit 
of  mountain  had  caused  the  saddles  to  slip.  This  broke  the 
ice,  and  we  speedily  found  ourselves  discussing  miners  and 
mining  in  French,  my  German  not  being  much  worse  than 
my  Bavarian's  English. 

After  viewing  the  mines,  the  walls  of  which,  composed  of 
crimson  cinnabar,  show  bravely  in  the  torch-glare,  we  worked 
our  way  through  the  tunnels  to  the  topmost  lode  and  open  air. 

Bidding  good-bye  to  what  I  could  see  of  my  German  in 
the  fog  from  his  meerschaum,  I  turned  to  ride  down  by  the 
road  instead  of  the  path.  I  had  not  gone  a  furlong,  when, 
turning  a  corner,  there  burst  upon  me  a  view  of  the  Avhole 
valley  of  tawny  California,  now  richly  golden  in  the  colors  of 
the  fall.  Looking  from  this  spur  of  the  Santa  Cruz  Mount- 
ains, with  the  Contra  Costa  range  before  me,  and  Mount 
Hamilton  towering  from  the  plain  apart,  I  could  discern  be- 
low me  the  gleam  of  the  Coyote  Creek,  and  of  the  windows 
in  the  Church  of  Santa  Clara — in  the  distance,  the  mountains 
and  waters  of  San  Francisco  Bay,  from  San  Mateo  to  Alame- 
da and  San  Pablo,  basking  in  unhindered  sun.  The  wild-oats 
dried  by  the  sun  made  of  the  plain  a  field  of  gold,  dotted  here 
and  there  with  groups  of  black  oak  and  bay,  and  darkened  at 
the  mountain-foot  with  "  chapparal."  The  volcanic  hills  were 
rounded  into  softness  m  the  delicious  haze,  and  all  nature 
overspread  with  a  poetic  calm.  As  I  lost  the  view,  the  migh- 
ty fog  was  beginning  to  pour  in  through  the  Golden  Gate  to 
refresh  America  with  dews  from  the  Pacific. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

LITTLE   CHINA. 

"The  Indians  begin  to  be  troublesome  again  in  Trinity 
County.  One  man  and  a  Chinaman  have  been  killed,  and  a 
lady  crippled  for  life." 

That  the  antipathy  everywhere  exhibited  by  the  English  to 
colored  races  was  not  less  strong  in  California  than  in  the  Car- 
olinas  I  had  suspected,  but  I  was  hardly  prepared  for  the  de- 
liberate distinction  between  men  and  yellow  men  drawn  in  this 
paragraph  from  the  Alia,  California  of  the  day  of  my  return 
to  San  Francisco. 


Little   China.  180 

A  determination  to  explore  Little  China,  as  the  Celestial 
quarter  of  the  city  is  termed,  already  arrived  at,  was  only 
strengthened  by  the  unconscious  humor  of  the  Alta,  and  I  at 
.once  set  off  in  search  of  two  of  the  detectives,  Edes  and  Sauls- 
bury,  to  whom  I  had  some  sort  of  introduction,  and  put  my- 
self under  their  chai-ge  for  the  night. 

We  had  not  been  half  an  hour  in  the  Chinese  theatre  or 
opera-house  before  my  detectives  must  have  repented  of  their 
offer  to  "  show  me  round  ;"  for,  incomprehensible  as  it  must 
have  seemed  to  them,  with  their  New  England  gravity  and 
American  contempt  for  the  Chinese,  I  was  amused  beyond 
measure  with  the  performance,  and  fairly  lost  myself  in  the 
longest  laugh  that  I  had  enjoyed  since  I  had  left  the  planta- 
tions of  Virginia. 

When  we  entered  the  house,  which  is  the  size  of  the  Strand 
Theatre  of  London,  it  may  have  been  ten  or  eleven  o'clock. 
The  performance  had  begun  at  seven,  and  was  likely  to  last 
till  two  a.m.  By  the  " perf ormance ,?  was  meant  this  particu- 
lar act  or  scene,  for  the  piece  had  been  going  on  every  evening 
for  a  month,  and  would  be  still  in  progress  during  the  best 
part  of  another,  it  being  the  principle  of  the  Chinese  drama  to 
take  up  the  hero  at  an  early  age,  and  conduct  him  to  the  grave 
— which  he  reaches  full  of  years  and  of  honor. 

The  house  was  crammed  with  a  grinning  crowd  of  "  yellow 
boys,"  while  the  "  China  ladies  "  had  a  long  gallery  to  them- 
selves. No  sound  of  applause  is  to  be  heard  in  a  Chinese 
place  of  amusement,  but  the  crowd  grin  delight  at  the  actors, 
who,  for  their  part,  grin  back  at  the  crowd. 

The  feature  of  the  performance  which  struck  me  at  once 
was  the  hearty  interest  the  actors  took  in  the  play,  and  the 
chaff  that  went  on  between  them  and  the  pit.  It  is  not  only 
from  their  numbers  and  the  nature  of  their  trades  that  the 
Chinese  may  be  called  the  Irish  of  the  Pacific ;  there  was  soul 
in  every  gesture. 

On  the  stage  behind  the  actors  was  a  band,  which  played 
unceasingly,  and  so  loud,  that  the  performers,  who  clearly  had 
not  the  smallest  intention  to  subordinate  their  parts  to  the 
music,  hail  to  talk  in  shrieks  in  order  to  be  heard.  The  audi- 
ence, too,  all  talked  in  their  loudest  natural  tones. 

As  for  the  play,  a  lady  made  love  to  an  old  gentleman  (prob- 


190  Greater  Britain. 

ably  the  hero,  as  this  was  the  second  month  or  third  act  of  the 
play),  and,  bawling  at  him  fiercely,  was  indignantly  rejected  by 
him  in  a  piercing  shriek.  Relatives,  male  and  female,  coming 
-with  many  howls  to  the  assistance  of  the  lady,  were  ignomin- 
ionsly  put  to  flight,  in  a  high  falsetto  key,  by  the  old  fellow's 
footmen,  who  were  in  turn  routed  by  a  force  of  yelling  spear- 
men, apparently  the  county  posse.  The  soldiers  wore  paint  in 
rings  of  various  colors,  put  on  so  deftly,  that  of  nose,  of  eyes, 
of  mouth  no  trace  could  be  discovered  ;  the  front  face  resem- 
bled a  target  for  archery.  All  this  time  a  steady,  unceasing 
uproar  was  continued  by  four  gongs  and  a  harp,  with  various 
cymbals,  pavilions,  triangles,  and  guitars. 

Scenery  there  was  none,  but  boards  were  put  up  in  the 
Elizabethan  way,  with  hieroglyphics  denoting  the  supposed  lo- 
cality ;  and  another  archaic  point  is  that  all  the  female  parts 
are  played  by  boys.  For  this  I  have  the  word  of  the  detect- 
ives ;  my  eyes,  had  I  not  long  since  ceased  to  believe  them, 
would  have  given  me  proof  to  the  contrary. 

The  acting,  as  far  as  I  could  judge  by  the  grimace,  was  ex- 
cellent. Nowhere  could  be  found  greater  spirit,  or  equal  pow- 
er of  facial  expression.  The  stage-fight  was  full  of  pantomimic 
force ;  the  leading  soldier  would  make  his  fortune  as  a  London 
pantaloon. 

When  the  detectives  could  no  longer  contain  their  distaste 
for  the  performance,  we  changed  our  quarters  for  a  restaurant, 
the  "  Hang  Heong,"  the  wood  of  which  was  brought  from 
China. 

The  street  along  which  we  had  to  pass  was  decorated  rath- 
er than  lit  by  paper  lanterns  hung  over  eveiy  door ;  but  the 
"  Hang  Heong  "  was  brilliantly  illuminated,  with  a  view,  no 
doubt,  to  attracting  the  crowd  as  they  poured  out  from  the 
theatre  at  a  later  hour.  The  ground-floor  was  occupied  by 
shop  and  kitchen,  the  dining-rooms  being  up  stairs.  The 
counter,  which  is  on  the  plan  of  that  in  the  houses  of  the  Pa- 
lais Royal,  was  presided  over,  not  by  a  smiling  woman,  but  by 
grave  and  pig-tailed  gentlemen  in  black,  who  received  our  or- 
der from  the  detective  with  the  decorous  solemnity  of  the 
head-waiter  in  an  English  country  inn. 

The  rooms  up  stairs  were  nearly  full ;  and  as  the  Chinese 
bv  no  means  follow  the  Americans  in  silent  eatinsr,  the  babel 


Little  China.  191 

was  tremendous.  A  saucer  and  a  pair  of  chop-sticks  were  given 
cue] i  of  us,  but  at  our  request  a  sf>oon  was  furnished,  as  a  spe- 
cial favor  to  "  Melicans." 

Tiny  cups  of  a  sweet  spirit  were  handed  us  before  supper 
was  brought  up.  The  liquor  was  a  kind  of  shrub,  but  white, 
made,  I  was  told,  from  sugar-cane.  For  first  course  Ave  had 
roast  duck  cut  in  pieces,  and  served  in  an  oil-filled  bowl,  and 
some  sort  of  fish  ;  tea  was  then  brought  in,  and  followed  by 
■shark's  fin, for  which  I  had  given  a  special  order;  the  result 
might  have  been  gum-arabic,  for  any  flavor  I  could  find.  Dog 
was  not  to  be  obtained,  and  birds'-nest  soup  was  beyond  the 
parse  of  a  traveller  seven  thousand  miles  from  home,  and 
twelve  thousand  from  his  next  supplies.  A  dish  of  some 
strange  black  fungus  stewed  in  rice,  followed  by  preserves  and 
cakes,  concluded  our  supper,  and  were  washed  down  by  our 
third  cups  of  tea. 

After  paying  our  respects  and  our  money  to  the  gentleman 
in  black,  who  grunted  a  lugubrious  something  that  answered 
to  "  good-night,"  we  paid  a  visit  to  the  Chinese  "  bad  quar- 
ter," which  differs  only  in  degree  of  badness  from  the 
"  quartier  Mexicain,"  the  bad  pre-eminence  being  ascribed, 
even  by  the  prejudiced  detectives,  to  the  Spaniards  and 
Chilians. 

Hurrying  on,  we  reached  the  Chinese  gaming-houses  just 
before  they  closed.  Some  difficulty  was  made  about  admit- 
ting us  by  the  "  yellow  loafers  "  who  hung  round  the  gate,  as 
the  houses  are  prohibited  by  law ;  but  as  soon  as  the  detect- 
ives, who  were  known,  explained  that  they  came  not  on  bus- 
iness but  on  pleasure,  we  were  suffered  to  pass  in  among 
the  silent,  melancholy  gamblers.  Not  a  word  was  heard  be- 
yond every  now  and  then  a  grunt  from  the  croupier.  Each 
man  knew  what  he  was  about,  and  won  or  lost  his  money 
in  the  stillness  of  a  dead-house.  The  game  appeared  to  be 
a  sort  of  loto ;  but  a  few  minutes  of  it  was  enough,  and  the 
detectives  pretended  to  no  deep  acquaintance  with  its  prin- 
ciples. 

The  San  Francisco  Chinese  are  not  all  mere  theatre-goers, 
loafers,  gamblers  ;  as  a  body,  they  are  frugal,  industrious,  con- 
tented men.  I  soon  grew  to  think  it  a  pleasure  to  meet  a 
Chinese  American,  so  clean  and  happy  in  his  look  ;  not  a  speck 


192  Greater  Britain. 

is  to  be  seen  upon  the  blue  cloth  of  his  long  coat  or  baggy 
trowsers.  His  hair  is  combed  with  care;  the  bamboo  on 
which  he  and  his  mate  together  carry  their  enormous  load 
seems  as  though  cleansed  a  dozen  times  a  day. 

It  is  said  to  be  a  peculiarity  of  the  Chinese  that  they  are 
all  alike  :  no  European  can,  without  he  has  dealings  with  them, 
distinguish  one  Celestial  from  another.  The  same,  however, 
may  be  said  of  the  Sikhs,  the  Australian  natives,  of  most 
colored  races,  in  short.  The  points  of  difference  which  distin- 
guish the  yellow  men,  the  red  men,  the  black  men  with 
straight  hair,  the  negroes,  from  any  other  race  whatever,  are 
so  much  more  prominent  than  the  minor  distinctions  between 
Ah  Sing  and  Chi  Long,  or  between  Uncle  Ned  and  Uncle  Tom, 
that  the  individual  is  sunk  and  lost  in  the  national  distinc- 
tions. To  the  Chinese,  in  turn,  all  Europeans  are  alike ;  but 
beneath  these  obvious  facts  there  lies  a  gram  of  solid  truth 
that  is  worth  the  hunting  out,  and  which  is  connected  with 
the  change-of-type  question  in  America  and  Australasia.  Men 
of  similar  habits  of  mind  and  body  are  alike  among  ourselves 
in  Europe  ;  noted  instances  are  the  close  resemblance  of  Pere 
Enfantin,  the  St.  Simonian  chief,  to  the  busts  of  Epicurus ;  of 
Bismarck  to  Cardinal  Ximenes.  Irish  laborers — men  who, 
for  the  most  part,  work  hard,  feed  little,  and  leave  their  minds 
entirely  unplowed  —  are  all  alike;  Chinamen,  who  all  work 
hard,  and  work  alike,  Avho  live  alike,  and  who  go  further,  and 
all  think  alike,  are,  by  a  mere  law  of  nature,  indistinguishable 
one  from  the  other. 

In  the  course  of  my  wanderings  in  the  Golden  City,  I  light- 
ed on  the  house  of  the  Canton  Company,  one  of  the  Chinese 
benevolent  societies,  the  others  being  those  of  Hong  Kong, 
Macao,  and  Amoy.  They  are  like  the  New  York  Immigra- 
tion Commission  and  the  London  "  Societe  Frangaise  de  Bien- 
faisance"  combined;  added  to  a  theatre  and  joss-house,  or 
temple,  and  governed  on  the  principles  of  such  clubs  as  those 
of  the  "  whites  "  or  "  greens  "  at  Heidelberg,  they  are,  in  short, 
Chinese  trades-unions,  sheltering  the  sick,  succoring  the  dis- 
tressed, finding  work  for  the  unemployed,  receiving  the  immi- 
grants from  China  when  they  land,  and  shipping  their  bones 
back  to  China,  ticketed  with  name  and  address,  when  they 
die.     "  Hong-Kong,  with  dead  Chinamen,"  is  said  to  be  a  com- 


Little   China.  103 

moa  answer  from  outward-bounders  to  a  hail  from  the  guard- 
ship  at  the  Golden  Gate. 

Some  of  the  Chinese  are  wealthy :  Tung  Yu  &  Co.,  Chi 
Sing  Tong  &  Co.,  Wing  Wo  Lang  &  Co.,  Chy  Lung  &  Co., 
stand  high  among  the  merchants  of  the  Golden  City.  Honest 
and  wealthy  as  these  men  are  allowed  to  be,  they  are  despised 
by  every  white  Californian,  from  the  governor  of  the  State  to 
the  Mexican  boy  who  cleans  his  shoes. 

In  America,  as  in  Australia,  there  is  a  violent  prejudice 
against  John  Chinaman.  He  pilfers,  avc  are  told ;  he  lies,  he 
is  dirty,  he  smokes  opium,  is  full  of  bestial  vices — a  pagan,  and 
— what  is  far  more  important — yellow !  All  his  sins  are  to 
be  pardoned  but  the  last.  Californians,  when  in  good-humor, 
will  admit  that  John  is  sober,  patient,  peaceable,  and  hard- 
working, that  his  clothes,  at  least,  are  scrupulously  clean ;  but 
he  is  yellow  !  Even  the  Mexicans,  themselves  despised,  look 
down  upon  the  Chinamen,  just  as  the  New  York  Irish  affect 
to  have  no  dealings  with  "  the  naygurs."  The  Chinese  them- 
selves pander  to  the  feeling.  Their  famous  appeal  to  the  Cal- 
ifornian Democrats  may  or  may  not  be  true:  "What  for 
Democlat  allee  timee  talkee  dam  Chinaman  ?  Chinaman  allee 
samee  Democlat;  no  likee  nigger,  no  likee  injun."  "Infer- 
nals,"  "  Celestials,"  and  "  Greasers  " — or  black  men,  yellow 
men,  and  Mexicans — it  is  hard  to  say  which  ai'e  most  despised 
by  the  American  whites  in  California. 

The  Chinaman  is  hated  by  the  rough  fellows  for  his  cow- 
ardice. Had  the  Chinese  stood  to  their  rights  against  the 
Americans,  they  would  long  since  have  been  driven  from  Cal- 
ifornia. As  it  is,  here  and  in  Victoria  they  invariably  give 
way,  aud  never  wrork  at  diggings  which  are  occupied  by 
whites.  Yet  in  both  countries  they  take  out  mining  licenses 
from  the  State,  which  is  bound  to  protect  them  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  rights  thus  gained,  but  which  is  powerless  against 
the  rioters  of  Ballarat,  or  the  "  Anti-chinese  mob "  of  El 
Dorado. 

The  Chinese  in  California  arc  practically  confined  by  pub- 
lic opinion,  violence,  or  threats,  to  inferior  kinds  of  "work, 
which  the  "  meanest "  of  the  whites  of  the  Pacific  States  re- 
fuse to  perform.  Politically,  this  is  slavery.  All  the  evils  to 
which  slavery  has  L;iven  rise  in  the  Cotton  States  are  produced 

I 


1'J4  Greater  Britain. 

here  by  violence,  in  a  less  degree  only  because  the  Chineso 
are  fewer  than  were  the  negroes. 

In  spite  of  a  prejudice  which  recalls  the  time  when  the 
British  Government  forbade  the  American  colonist  to  employ 
negroes  in  the  manufacture  of  hats,  on  the  ground  that  white 
laborers  could  not  stand  the  competition,  the  yellow  men  con- 
tinue to  flock  to  "  Gold  Hills,"  as  they  call  San  Francisco. 
Already  they  are  the  washermen,  sweepers,  and  porters  of 
three  States,  two  Territories,  and  British  Columbia.  They 
are  denied  civil  rights ;  their  word  is  not  taken  in  cases  where 
white  men  are  concerned ;  a  heavy  tax  is  set  upon  them  on  their 
entry  to  the  State ;  a  second  tax  when  they  commence  to  mine — 
still  their  number  steadily  increases.  In  1 852,  Governor  Bigler, 
in  his  message,  recommended  the  prohibition  of  the  immigra- 
tion of  the  Chinese,  but  they  now  number  one-tenth  of  the 
population. 

The  Irish  of  Asia,  the  Chinese  have  commenced  to  flow  over 
on  to  the  outer  world.  Who  shall  say  whex-e  the  flood  will 
stoj)  ?  Ireland,  with  now  five  millions  of  people,  has  in  twenty 
years  poured  an  equal  number  out  into  the  world.  What  is 
to  prevent  the  next  fifty  years  seeing  an  emigration  of  a 
couple  of  hundreds  of  millions  from  the  rebellion-torn  prov- 
inces of  Cathay  ? 

Three  Chinamen  in  a  temperate  climate  will  do  as  much 
arm-work  as  two  Englishmen,  and  will  eat  or  cost  less.  It 
looks  as  though  the  cheaper  would  starve  out  the  dear  race, 
as  rabbits  drive  out  stronger  but  hungrier  hares.  This  tend- 
ency is  already  plainly  visible  in  our  mercantile  marine :  the 
ships  are  manned  with  motley  crews  of  Bombay  Lascars, 
Maories,  Negroes,  Arabs,  Chinamen,  Kroomen,  and  Malays. 
There  are  no  British  or  American  seamen  now,  except  boys 
who  are  to  be  quartermasters  some  day,  and  experienced 
hands  who  are  quartermasters  already.  But  there  is  nothing 
to  regret  in  this :  Anglo-Saxons  are  too  valuable  to  be  used 
as  ordinary  seamen  where  Lascars  will  do  nearly,  and  Maories 
quite  as  well.  Natxxre  seems  to  intend  the  English  for  a  race 
of  officers,  to  direct  and  guide  the  cheap  labor  of  the  Eastern 
peoples. 

The  serious  side  of  the  Chinese  problem — just  toixehed  on 
here — will  force  itself  rxxdely  upon  oxxr  notice  in  Australia. 


California.  195 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

CALIFORNIA. 

"In  front  of  San  Francisco  are  745,000,000  of  hungry 
Asiatics,  who  have  spices  to  exchange  for  meat  and  grain." 

The  words  ai-e  Governor  Gilpin's,  made  nse  of  by  him  in 
discussing  the  future  of  overland  trade,  and  worthy  of  notice, 
as  showing  why  it  is  that,  in  making  forecasts  of  the  future 
of  California,  we  have  to  look  more  to  her  facilities  for  trade 
than  to  her  natural  productions.  San  Francisco  aims  at  being, 
not  so  much  the  port  of  California,  as  one  of  the  chief  stations 
on  the  Anglo-Saxon  highway  round  the  globe. 

Although  the  chief  claim  of  California  to  consideration  is 
her  position  on  the  Pacific,  her  fertility  and  size  alone  entitle 
her  to  notice.  This  single  State  is  750  miles  in  length — would 
stretch  from  Chamouni  to  the  southernmost  point  of  Malta. 
There  are  two  capes  in  California — one  nearly  in  the  latitude 
of  Jerusalem,  the  other  nearly  in  the  latitude  of  Rome.  The 
State  has  twice  the  area  of  Great  Britain ;  the  single  valley  of 
the  Joaquin  and  Sacramento,  from  Tulare  Lake  to  the  great 
snow-peak  of  Shasta,  is  as  large  as  the  three  kingdoms. 
Every  useful  mineral,  every  kind  of  fertile  soil,  every  variety 
of  helpful  climate,  are  to  be  found  within  the  State.  There 
are  in  the  Union  forty-five  such  States  or  Territories,  with  an 
average  area  equal  to  that  of  Britain. 

Between  the  Pacific  and  the  snows  of  the  Sierra  are  the 
three  great  tracts,  each  with  its  soil  and  character.  On  the 
slopes  of  the  Sierra  are  the  forests  of  giant  timber,  the  shel- 
tered valleys,  and  the  gold-fields  in  which  I  spent  my  first  week 
in  California.  Next  comes  the  great  hot  plain  of  Sacramento, 
where,  with  irrigation,  all  the  best  fruits  of  the  tropics  grow 
luxuriantly,  where  water  for  irrigation  is  plentiful,  and  the 
Pacific  breeze  will  raise  it.  Round  the  valley  are  vast  tracts 
for  sheep  and  wheat,  and  on  the  Contra  Costas  are  millions  of 
acres  of  wild  oats  growing  on  the  best  of  lands  for  cattle, 
while  the  slopes  are  covered  with  young  vines.  Between  the 
Contra  Costa  range  and  the  sea  is  a  winterless  strip,  possessing 


196 


Greater  Britain 


EL  CAPITAN,   TOSEMITE  VALLE1'. 

for  table  vegetables  and  flowers  the  finest  soil  and  climate  in 
the  world.  The  story  goes  that  Californian  boys,  when  asked 
if  they  believe  in  a  future  state,  reply,  "  Guess  so  ;  California." 
Whether  San  Francisco  will  grow  to  be  a  second  Liver- 
pool or  New  York,  is  an  all-absorbing  question  to  those  who 
live  on  the  Pacific  shores,  and  one  not  without  an  interest  and 
a  moral  for  ourselves.  New  York  has  waxed  rich  and  huge 
mainly  because  she  is  so  placed  as  to  command  one  of  the  best 
harbors  on  the  coast  of  a  country  which  exports  enormously 


California.  197 

of  brcadstuffs.  Liverpool  has  thrived  as  one  of  the  shipping- 
ports  for  the  manufacturers  of  the  northern  coal  counties  of 
England.  San  Francisco  Bay,  as  the  best  harbor  south  of 
Paget  Sound,  is,  and  will  remain,  the  centre  of  the  export- 
trade  of  the  Pacific  States  in  wool  and  cereals.  If  coal  is 
found  in  plenty  in  the  Golden  State,  population  will  increase, 
manufactures  spring  up,  and  the  export  of  wrought  articles 
take  the  place  of  that  of  raw  produce.  If  coal  is  found  in 
the  Contra  Costa  range,  San  Francisco  will  continue,  in  spite 
of  earthquakes,  to  be  the  foremost  port  on  the  Pacific  side ; 
if,  as  is  more  probable,  the  find  of  coal  is  confined  to  the 
Monte  Diablo  district,  and  is  of  trifling  value,  still  the  future 
of  San  Francisco  as  the  meeting-point  of  the  railways,  and 
centre  of  the  import  of  manufactured  goods,  and  of  the  ex- 
port of  the  produce  of  an  agricultural  and  pastoral  interior, 
is  as  certain  as  it  must  inevitably  be  brilliant.  Whether 
the  chief  town  of  the  Pacific  States  will  in  time  develop 
into  one  of  the  commercial  capitals  of  the  world,  is  a  wider 
and  a  harder  question.  That  it  will  be  the  converging  point 
of  the  Pacific  railroads  both  of  Chicago  and  St.  Louis,  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  That  all  the  new  overland  trade  from 
China  and  Japan  will  pass  through  it,  seems  as  clear ;  it  is  the 
extent  of  this  trade  that  is  in  question.  For  the  moment, 
land  transit  can  not  compete  on  equal  terms  with  water  car- 
riage ;  but  assuming  that,  in  the  long  run,  this  will  cease  to 
be  the  case,  it  will  be  the  overland  route  across  'Russia,  and 
not  that  through  the  United  States,  that  will  convey  the  silks 
and  teas  of  China  to  Central  and  Western  Europe.  The  very 
arguments  of  which  the  Californian  merchants  make  use  to 
show  that  the  delicate  goods  of  China  need  land  transport,  go 
to  prove  that  shipping  and  unshipping  in  the  Pacific,  and  a 
repetition  in  the  Atlantic  of  each  process,  can  not  be  good  for 
them.  The  political  importance  to  America  of  the  Pacific 
railroads  does  not  admit  of  overstatement;  but  the  Russian 
or  English  Pacific  routes  must,  commercially  speaking,  win 
the  day.  For  rare  and  costly  Eastern  goods,  the  English  rail- 
way through  Southern  China,  Upper  India,  the  Persian  coast, 
and  the  Euphrates  is  no  longer  now  a  dream.  If  Russian 
bureaucracy  takes  too  long  to  move,  trade  will  be  diverted  by 
the  Gulf  route ;  coarser  goods  and  food  will  long  continue  to 


198  Greater  Britain. 

come  by  sea,  but  in  no  case  can  the  city  of  San  Francisco  be- 
come a  western  outpost  of  Europe. 

The  lustre  of  the  future  of  San  Francisco  is  not  dimmed 
by  considerations  such  as  these ;  as  the  port  of  entry  for  the 
trade  of  America  with  all  the  East,  its  wealth  must  become 
enormous ;  and  if,  as  is  probable,  Japan,  New  Zealand,  and 
New  South  Wales  become  great  manufacturing  communities, 
San  Francisco  must  needs  in  time  take  rank  as  a  second,  if 
not  a  greater  London.  This,  hoAvever,  is  the  more  distant  fu- 
ture. With  cheaper  labor  than  the  Pacific  States  and  the 
British  colonies  possess,  with  a  more  settled  government  than 
Japan — Pennsylvania  and  Ohio,  from  the  time  that  the  Pa- 
cific Railroad  is  completed,  will  take,  and  for  years  will  keep, 
the  China  trade.  As  for  the  colonies,  the  voyage  from  San 
Francisco  to  Australia  is  almost  as  long  and  difficult  as  that 
from  England ;  and  there  is  every  probability  that  Lancashire 
and  Belgium  will  continue  to  supply  the  colonists  Avith  clothes 
and  tools  until  they  themselves,  possessed  as  they  are  of  coal, 
become  competent  to  make  them.  The  merchants  of  San 
Francisco  will  be  limited  in  the  main  to  the  trade  with  China 
and  Japan.  In  this  direction  the  future  has  no  bounds: 
through  California  and  the  Sandwich  Islands,  through  Japan, 
fast  becoming  American,  and  China,  the  coast  of  Avhich  is  al- 
ready British,  our  race  seems  marching  Avestward  to  universal 
rule.  The  Russian  Empire  itself,  with  all  its  passive  strength, 
can  not  stand  against  the  English  horde,  ever  pushing,  with 
burning  energy,  tOAvard  the  setting  sun.  Russia  and  England 
are  said  to  be  nearing  each  other  upon  the  Indus;  but  long 
before  they  can  meet  there,  they  Avill  be  face  to  face  upon  the 
Amoor. 

For  a  time  the  flood  may  be  diverted  south  or  north :  Mex- 
ico Avill  doubtless,  and  British  Columbia  Avill  probably,  carry 
off  a  portion  of  the  thousands  who  are  pouring  Avest  from  the 
bleak  rocks  of  New  England.  The  Californian  expedition  of 
1853  against  Sonora  and  Lower  California  will  be  repeated 
with  success,  but  the  tide  will  be  but  momentarily  stayed.  So 
entirely  are  English  countries  uoav  the  mother-lands  of  energy 
and  adventure  throughout  the  Avorld,  that  no  one  who  has 
Avatched  what  has  happened  in  California,  in  British  Columbia, 
and  on  the  Avest  coast  of  New  Zealand,  can  doubt  that  the 


California.  191) 

discovery  of  placer  gold-fields  on  any  coast  or  in  any  sea-girt 
country  in  the  world,  must  now  be  followed  by  the  speedy 
rise  there  of  an  English  government :  were  gold,  for  instance, 
found  in  surface  diggings  in  Japan,  Japan  would  be  English 
in  five  years.  We  know  enough  of  Chili,  of  the  new  Russian 
country  on  the  Amoor,  of  Japan,  to  be  aware  that  such  dis- 
coveries are  more  than  likely  to  occur. 

In  the  face  of  facts  like  these,  men  are  to  be  found  who 
ask  whether  a  break-up  of  the  Union  is  not  still  probable — 
whether  the  Pacific  States  are  not  likely  to  secede  from  the 
Atlantic;  some  even  contend  for  the  general  principle  that 
"America  must  go  to  pieces — she  is  too  big."  It  is  small 
powers,  not  great  ones,  that  have  become  impossible :  the  uni- 
fication of  Germany  is  in  this  respect  but  the  dawn  of  a  new 
era.  The  great  countries  of  to-day  are  smaller  than  were  the 
smallest  of  a  hundred  years  ago.  Lewes  was  farther  from 
London  in  1700  than  Edinburgh  is  now.  New  York  and 
San  Francisco  will  in  1870  be  nearer  to  each  other  than  Can- 
ton and  Pekin.  From  the  point  of  view  of  mere  size,  there  is 
more  likelihood  of  England  entering  the  Union  than  of  Cali- 
fornia seceding  from  it. 

The  material  interests  of  the  Pacific  States  will  always  lie 
in  union.  The  West,  sympathizing  in  the  main  with  the 
Southerners  upon  the  slavery  question,  threw  herself  into  the 
■war,  and  crushed  them,  because  she  saw  the  necessity  of  keep- 
ing her  outlets  under  her  own  control.  The  same  policy 
would  hold  good  for  the  Pacific  States  in  the  case  of  the  con 
tinental  railroad.  America,  of  all  countries,  alone  shares  the 
future  of  both  Atlantic  and  Pacific,  and  she  knows  her  inter- 
ests too  well  to  allow  such  an  advantage  to  be  thrown  away, 
Uncalculating  rebellion  of  the  Pacific  States  upon  some  sud- 
den heat,  is  the  only  danger  to  be  apprehended,  and  such  a 
rising  could  be  put  down  with  ease,  owing  to  the  manner  in 
which  these  States  are  commanded  from  the  sea.  Through- 
out the  late  rebellion,  the  Federal  navy,  though  officered  al- 
most entirely  by  Southerners,  wTas  loyal  to  the  flag,  and  it 
would  be  so  again.  In  these  days  loyalty  may  be  said  to  be 
peculiarly  the  sailor's  passion :  perhaps  he  loves  his  country 
because  he  sees  so  little  of  it. 

The  single  dansrer  that  looms  in  the  more  distant  future  is 


200  Greater  Britain. 

the  eventual  control  of  Congress  by  the  Irish,  while  the  En- 
glish retain  their  hold  on  the  Pacific  shores. 

California  is  too  British  to  be  typically  American :  it 
would  seem  that  nowhere  in  the  United  States  have  Ave  found 
the  true  America  or  the  real  American.  Except  as  abstrac- 
tions, they  do  not  exist ;  it  is  only  by  looking  carefully  at  each 
eccentric  and  irregular  America — at  Irish  New  York,  at  Puri- 
tan New  England,  at  the  rowdy  South,  at  the  rough  and  swag- 
gering Far  West,  at  the  cosmoj:>olitan  Pacific  States — that  we 
come  to  reject  the  anomalous  features,  and  to  find  America 
in  the  points  they  possess  in  common.  It  is  when  the  country 
is  left  that  there  rises  in  the  mind  an  image  that  soars  above 
all  local  prejudice — that  of  the  America  of  the  law-abiding, 
mighty  people  who  are  imposing  English  institutions  on  tho 
world. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

MEXICO. 


In  company  with  a  throng  of  men  of  all  races,  all  tongues,  and 
all  trades,  such  as  a  Calif  ornian  steamer  can  alone  collect,  I  came 
coasting  southward  under  the  cliffs  of  Lower  California.  Of 
the  thousand  passengers  who  sought  refuge  from  the  stifling 
heat  upon  the  upper  and  hurricane  decks,  more  than  half  were 
diggers  returning  with  a  "  pile  "  to  their  homes  in  the  Atlan- 
tic States.  While  we  hung  over  the  bulwarks  watching  the 
bonitos  and  the  whales,  the  diggers  threw  "  bolas  "  at  the  boo- 
bies that  flew  out  to  us  from  the  blazing  rocks,  and  brought 
them  down  screaming  upon  the  decks.  Threading  our  way 
through  the  reefs  off  the  lovely  Island  of  Margarita,  where 
the  "  Independence  "  was  lost,  with  three  hundred  human  be- 
ings, we  lay  to  at  Cape  St.  Lucas,  and  landed  his  excellency 
Don  Antonio  Pedrin,  Mexican  Governor  of  Lower  California, 
and  a  Juarez  man,  in  the  very  bay  where  Cavendish  lay  in  wait 
for  months  for  the  "  great  Manilla  ship,"  the  Acapulco  galleon. 

When  Girolamo  Benzoni  visited  the  Mexican  Pacific  coast, 
he  confused  the  turtle  with  the  "  crocodile,"  describing  the 


Mexico.  201 

former  under  the  latter's  name ;  but  at  Manzanilla  the  two  may 
be  seen  lying  almost  side  by  side  upon  the  sands.  Separated 
from  the  blue  waters  of  the  harbor  by  a  narrow  strand,  there 
is  a  festering  lagoon,  the  banks  of  which  swarm  with  the  small- 
er alligators ;  but  a  few  yards  off,  upon  the  other  slope,  the 
towns-folk  and  the  turtles  they  had  brought  down  for  sale  to 
our  ship's  purser  were  lying,  when  I  saw  them,  in  a  confused 
heap,  under  an  awning  of  sail-cloth  nailed  up  to  the  palm-trees. 
Alligator,  turtle,  Mexican,  it  was  hard  to  say  which  was  the  su- 
perior being.  A  French  corvette  was  in  possession  of  the  port 
— one  of  the  last  of  the  holding-places  through  which  the  rem- 
nants of  the  army  of  occupation  were  dribbling  back  to  France. 

In  the  land-locked  Bay  of  Acapulco,  one  of  the  dozen  "  hot- 
test places  in  the  world,"  we  found  two  French  frigates,  whose 
officers  boarded  us  at  once.  They  told  us  that  they  landed 
their  marines  every  morning  after  breakfast,  and  re-embarked 
them  before  sunset ;  they  could  get  nothing  from  the  shore 
but  water ;  the  Mexicans,  under  Alvarez,  occupied  the  town 
at  night,  and  carried  off  even  the  fruit.  When  I  asked  about 
supplies,  the  answer  was  sweeping  :  "  Ah,  mon  Dieu,  monsieur, 
cette  ssacrrreeee  canaille  de  Alvarez  nous  vole  tout.  Nous 
n'avons  que  de  l'eau  fraiche,  et  Alvarez  va  nous  enrporter  la 
fontaine  aussi  quelque  nuit.  Ce  sont  des  voleurs,  voyez-vous, 
ces  Mechicanos."  When  they  granted  us  leave  to  land,  it  was 
with  the  proviso  that  we  should  not  blame  them  if  we  were 
shot  at  by  the  Mexicans  as  Ave  went  ashore,  and  by  themselves 
as  we  came  off  again.  Firing  often  takes  place  at  night  be- 
tween Alvarez  and  the  French,  but  with  a  total  loss  in  many 
months  of  only  two  men  killed. 

The  day  of  my  visit  to  Acapulco  was  the  anniversary  of  the 
issue,  one  year  before,  of  Marshal  Bazaine's  famous  order  of 
the  day,  directing  the  instant  execution,  as  red-handed  rebels, 
of  Mexican  prisoners  taken  by  the  French.  It  is  a  strange 
commentary  upon  the  marshal's  circular  that,  in  a  year  from 
its  issue,  the  "  Latin  Empire  in  America  "  should  have  had  a 
term  set  to  it  by  the  President  of  the  United  States.  In  Can- 
ada, in  India,  in  Egypt,  in  New  Zealand,  the  English  have  met 
the  French  abroad,  and  in  this  Mexican  affair  history  does 
but  repeat  itself.  There  is  nothing  more  singular  to  the  Lon- 
doner than  the  contempt  of  the  Americans  for  France.     All 

I  2 


202  Greater  Britain. 

Europe  seems  small  when  seen  from  the  United  States ;  but 
the  opinion  of  Great  Britain  and  the  strength  of  Russia  are 
still  looked  on  with  some  respect :  France  alone  completely 
vanishes,  and  instead  of  every  one  asking,  as  with  us,  "  What 
does  the  Emperor  say  ?"  no  one  cares  in  the  least  what  Na- 
poleon does  or  thinks.  In  a  Chicago  paper  I  have  seen  a  col- 
umn of  Washington  news  headed,  "  Seward  orders  Lewis 
Napoleon  to  leave  Mexico  right  away !  Nap  lies  badly  to  get 
out  of  the  fix  !"  While  the  Americans  are  still,  in  a  high  de- 
gree, susceptible  of  affront  from  England,  and  would  never, 
if  they  conceived  themselves  purposely  insulted,  stop  to  weigh 
the  cost  of  war,  toward  France  they  only  feel,  as  a  Califor- 
nian  said  to  me,  "  Is  it  worth  our  while  to  set  to  work  to  whip 
her  ?"  The  effect  of  Gettysburg  and  Sadowa  will  be  that,  ex- 
cept Great  Britain,  Italy,  and  Spain,  no  nations  will  care  much 
for  the  threats  or  praises  of  Imperial  France. 

The  true  character  of  the  struggle  in  Mexico  has  not  been 
pointed  out.  It  was  not  a  mere  conflict  between  the  majori- 
ty of  the  people  and  a  minority  supported  by  foreign  aid,  but 
an  uprising  of  the  Indians  of  the  country  against  the  whites 
of  the  chief  town.  The  Spaniards  of  the  capital  were  Maxi- 
milian's supporters,  and  upon  them  the  Indians  and  Mestizos 
have  visited  their  revenge  for  the  deeds  of  Cortez  and  Pizar- 
ro.  On  the  west  coast  there  is  to  be  seen  no  trace  of  Spanish 
blood  :  in  dress,  in  language,  in  religion,  the  people  are  Ibe- 
rian ;  in  features,  in  idleness,  and  in  ferocity,  undoubtedly 
Bed  Indian. 

In  the  reports  of  the  Argentine  Confederation,  it  is  stated 
that  the  Circassian  blood  comes  to  the  front  in  the  mixed 
race ;  a  few  hundred  Spanish  families  in  La  Plata  are  said  to 
have  absorbed  several  hundred  thousand  Indians,  without 
suffering  in  their  whiteness  or  other  natural  characteristics. 
There  is  something  of  the  frog  that  swallowed  the  ox  in  this ; 
and  the  theories  of  the  Argentine  officials,  themselves  of  the 
mixed  race,  can  not  outweigh  the  evidence  of  our  own  eyes 
in  the  sea-port  towns  of  Mexico.  There,  at  least,  it  is  the 
Spaniards,  not  the  Indians,  who  have  disappeared ;  and  the 
only  mixture  of  blood  that  can  be  traced  is  that  of  Red  In- 
dian and  negro,  in  the  fisher-boys  about  the  ports.  They  are 
lithe  lads,  with  eyes  full  of  art  and  fire. 


Mexico.  203 

The  Spaniards  of  Mexico  have  become  Red  Indians,  as  the 
Turks  of  Europe  have  become  Albanians  or  Circassians. 
Where  the  conquering  marries  into  the  conquered  race,  it  ends 
by  being  absorbed,  and  the  mixed  breed  gradually  becomes 
pure  again  in  the  type  of  the  more  numerous  race.  It  would 
seem  that  the  North  American  continent  will  soon  be  divided 
between  the  Saxon  and  the  Aztec  republics. 

In  California  I  once  met  with  a  caricature  in  which  Uncle 
Sam  or  Brother  Jonathan  is  lying  on  his  back  upon  Canada 
and  the  United  States,  with  his  head  in  Russian  America,  and 
his  feet  against  a  tumble-down  fence,  behind  which  is  Mexico. 
His  knees  are  bent,  aud  his  position  cramped.  He  says, 
"  Guess  I  shall  soon  have  to  stretch  my  legs  some  /"  There 
is  not  in  the  United  States  any  strong  feeling  in  favor  of  the 
annexation  of  the  remainder  of  the  continent,  but  there  is  a 
solemn  determination  that  no  foreign  country  shall  in  any  way 
gain  fresh  footing  or  influence  upon  American  soil,  and  that 
monarchy  shall  not  be  established  in  Mexico  or  Canada. 
Further  than  this,  there  is  a  belief  that,  as  the  south  central 
portions  of  the  States  become  fully  peopled  up,  population 
will  pour  over  into  the  Mexican  provinces  of  Chihuahua  and 
Sonora,  and  that  the  annexation  of  these  and  some  other  por- 
tions of  Mexico  to  the  United  States  can  not  long  be  prevent- 
ed. For  such  acquisitions  of  territory  America  would  pay  as 
she  paid  in  the  case  of  Texas,  which  she  first  conquered,  and 
then  bought  at  a  fair  price. 

In  annexing  the  whole  of  Mexico,  Protestant  Americans 
would  feel  that  they  were  losing  more  than  they  could  gain. 
In  California  and  New  Mexico,  they  have  already  to  deal  with 
a  population  of  Mexican  Catholics,  and  difficulties  have  arisen 
in  the  matter  of  the  Church  lands.  The  Catholic  vote  is  pow- 
erful not  only  in  California  and  New  York,  but  in  Maryland, 
in  Louisiana,  in  Kansas,  and  even  in  Massachusetts.  The  sons 
of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  would  scarcely  look  with  pleasure  on 
the  admission  to  the  Union  of  ten  millions  of  Mexican  Catho- 
lics, and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  day-dreams  of  Leonard  Cal- 
vert would  not  be  realized  in  the  triumph  of  such  a  Catholi- 
cism as  theirs,  any  more  than  in  the  success  of  that  of  the  Phil- 
adelphia Academy  or  New  York  Tammany  Hall. 

With  the  exception  of  the  Irish,  the  great  majority  of 


204  Greater  Britain. 

Catholic  immigrants  avoid  the  United  States,  but  the  migra- 
tion of  European  Catholics  to  South  America  is  increasing 
year  by  year.  Just  as  the  Germans,  the  Norwegians,  and  the 
Irish  now  toward  the  States,  the  French,  the  Spanish,  and  the 
Italians  flock  into  La  Plata,  Chili,  and  Brazil.  The  European 
population  of  La  Plata  has  already  reached  three  hundred 
thousand,  and  is  growing  fast.  The  French  "mission"  in 
Mexico  Avas  the  making  of  that  great  country  a  further  field 
for  the  Latin  immigration  ;  and  when  the  Californians  march- 
ed to  Juarez's  help,  it  was  to  save  Mexico  to  North  America. 

In  all  history  nothing  can  be  found  more  dignified  than  the 
action  of  America  upon  the  3Ionroc  doctrine.  Since  the  prin- 
ciple was  first  laid  down  in  words  in  1823,  the  national  action 
has  been  courteous,  consistent,  firm ;  and  the  language  used, 
now  that  America  is  all-powerful,  is  the  same  that  her  states- 
men used  during  the  rebellion  in  the  hour  of  her  most  instant 
peril.  It  will  be  hard  for  political  philosophers  of  the  future  to 
assert  that  a  democratic  republic  can  have  no  foreign  policy. 

The  Pacific  coast  of  Mexico  is  wonderfully  full  of  beauties 
of  a  peculiar  kind  j  the  sea  is  always  calm,  and  of  a  deep  dull 
blue,  with  turtles  lying  basking  on  the  surface,  and  flying-fish 
skimming  lightly  over  its  expanse,  while  the  shores  supply  a 
fringe  of  bright  yellow  sand  at  once  to  the  ocean  blue  and  to 
the  rich  green  of  the  cactus  groves.  On  every  spit  or  sand- 
bar there  grows  the  feathery  palm.  A  low  range  of  jungle- 
covered  hills  is  cut  by  gullies,  through  which  we  get  glimpses 
of  lagoons  bluer  than  the  sea  itself,  and  behind  them  the  sharp 
volcanic  peaks  rise  through  and  into  cloud.  Once  in  a  while 
Colima,  or  other  giant  hill,  towering  above  the  rest  in  blue- 
black  gloom,  serves  to  show  that  the  shores  belong  to  some 
mightier  continent  than  Calypso's  isle. 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

REPUBLICAN  OK   DEMOCRAT. 


Among  our  Californian  passengers  we  had  many  strong 
party-men,  and  political  conversation  never  flagged  throughout 
the  voyage.     In  every  discussion  it  became  more  and  more 


Republican  or  Democrat.  205 

clear  that  the  Democratic  is  the  Constitutional,  the  Repub- 
lican the  Utilitarian  party — rigidly  called  "  Radical,"  from  its 
habit  of  going  to  the  root  of  things,  to  see  whether  they  are 
good  or  bad.  Such,  however,  is  the  misfortune  of  America 
in  the  possession  of  a  written  Constitution,  such  the  reverence 
paid  to  that  document  on  account  of  the  character  of  the  men 
who  penned  it,  that  even  the  extremest  Radicals  dare  not 
admit  in  public  that  they  aim  at  essential  change,  and  the 
party  loses,  in  consequence,  a  portion  of  the  strength  that 
attaches  to  outspoken  honesty. 

The  President's  party  at  their  Convention — known  as  the 
"  Wigwam  " — which  met  while  I  was  in  Philadelphia,  main- 
tained that  the  war  had  but  restored  the  "  Union  as  it  was," 
with  State  Rights  unimpaired.  The  Republicans  say  that  they 
gave  their  blood,  as  they  are  ready  again  to  shed  it — for  the 
"  Union  as  it  was  not;"  for  one  nation,  and  not  for  thirty-six, 
or  forty-five.  The  Wigwam  declared  that  the  Washington 
Government  had  no  constitutional  right  to  deny  representa- 
tion in  Congress  to  any  State.  The  Republicans  ask  how,  if 
this  constitutional  provision  is  to  be  observed,  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  country  is  to  be  carried  on.  The  Wigwam  laid 
it  down  as  a  principle  that  Congress  had  no  power  to  inter- 
fere with  the  right  possessed  by  each  State  to  prescribe  quali- 
fications for  the  elective  franchise.  The  Radicals  say  that 
State  sovereignty  should  have  vanished  when  slavery  went 
down,  and  ask  how  the  South  is  to  be  governed  consistently 
with  republicanism  unless  by  negro  suffrage,  and  how  this 
is  to  be  maintained  except  by  Federal  control  over  the  vari- 
ous States — by  abolition,  in  short,  of  the  old  Union,  and  cre- 
ation of  a  new.  The  more  honest  among  the  Republicans 
admit  that  for  the  position  which  they  have  taken  up  they 
can  find  no  warrant  in  the  Constitution ;  that,  according  to 
the  doctrine  which  the  "  Continental  statesman "  and  the 
authors  of  "  The  Federalist "  would  lay  down,  were  they  liv- 
ing, thirty-five  of  the  States,  even  if  they  were  unanimous, 
could  have  no  right  to  tamper  with  the  Constitution  of  the 
thirty-sixth.  The  answer  to  all  this  can  only  be  that,  were 
the  Constitution  to  be  closely  followed,  the  result  would  be 
the  ruin  of  the  land. 

The  Republican  party  have   been  blamed  because  their 


206  Greater  Britain. 

theory  and  practice  alike  tend  toward  a  consolidation  of  pow- 
er, and  a  strengthening  of  the  hands  of  the  Government  at 
"Washington.  It  is  in  this  that  lies  their  chief  claim  to  sup- 
port. Local  government  is  an  excellent  thing ;  it  is  the 
greatest  of  the  inventions  of  our  inventive  race,  the  chief 
security  for  continued  freedom  possessed  by  a  people  already 
free.  This  local  government  is  consistent  with  a  powerful 
executive ;  between  the  village  municipality  and  Congress, 
between  the  Cabinet  and  the  district  council  of  selectmen, 
there  can  be  no  conflict :  it  is  State  sovereignty,  and  the  per- 
nicious heresy  of  primary  allegiance  to  the  State,  that  have 
already  proved  as  costly  to  the  republic  as  they  are  dangerous 
to  her  future. 

It  has  been  said  that  America,  under  the  Federal  system, 
unites  the  freedom  of  the  small  State  with  the  power  of  the 
great ;  but  though  this  is  true,  it  is  brought  about,  not 
through  the  federation  of  the  States,  Imt  through  that  of  the 
townships  and  districts.  The  latter  are  the  true  units  to 
which  the  consistent  Republican  owes  his  secondary  alle- 
giance. It  is,  perhaps,  only  in  the  tiny  New  England  States 
that  Northern  men  care  much  about  their  commonwealth;  a 
citizen  of  Pennsylvania  or  New  York  never  talks  of  his  State 
unless  to  criticise  its  Legislature.  After  all,  where  intelligence 
and  education  are  all  but  universal,  where  a  spirit  of  freedom 
has  struck  its  roots  into  the  national  heart  of  a  great  race, 
there  can  be  no  danger  in  centralization ;  for  the  power  that 
you  strengthen  is  that  of  the  whole  people,  and  a  nation  can 
have  nothing  to  fear  from  itself. 

In  watching  the  measures  of  the  Radicals,  Ave  must  remem- 
ber that  they  have  still  to  guard  their  country  against  great 
dangers.  The  war  did  not  last  long  enough  to  destroy  anti- 
republicanism  along  Avith  slavery,  The  social  system  of  the 
Carolinas  was  upset ;  but  the  political  fabric  built  upon  a 
slavery  foundation  in  such  "  free  "  States  as  Ncav  York  and 
Maryland  is  scarcely  shaken. 

If  we  look  to  the  record  of  the  Republican  party  Avith  a 
vieAV  to  making  a  forecast  of  its  future  conduct,  Ave  find  that 
at  the  end  of  the  Avar  the  party  had  before  it  the  choice  be- 
tween military  rule  and  negro  rule  for  the  South — between  a 
government  carried  on  through  generals  and  provost-marshals 


Republican  or  Democrat.  207 

tinknown  to  the  Constitution  and  to  the  courts,  and  destined 
to  prolong  for  ages  the  disruption  of  the  Union  and  disquiet 
of  the  nation,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  rule  founded  upon  the 
principles  of  equity  and  self-govei'nment,  dear  to  our  race,  and 
supported  hy  local  majorities,  not  hy  foreign  bayonets.  Al- 
though possessed  of  the  whole  military  power  of  the  nation, 
the  Republicans  refused  to  endanger  their  country,  and  estab- 
lished a  system  intended  to  lead,  by  gradual  steps,  to  equal 
suffrage  in  the  South.  The  immediate  interest  of  the  party, 
as  distinguished  from  that  of  the  country  at  large,  was  the 
other  way.  The  Republican  majority  of  the  presidential 
elections  of  1860  and  1864  had  been  increased  by  the  success 
of  the  Federal  arms,  borne  mainly  by  the  Republicans  of  New 
England  and  the  West,  in  a  war  conducted  to  a  triumphant 
issue  under  the  leadership  of  Republican  Congressmen  and 
generals.  The  apparent  magnanimity  of  the  admission  of  a 
portion  of  the  rebels,  warm-handed,  to  the  poll,  would  still 
further  have  strengthened  the  Republicans  in  the  Western 
and  Border  States  ;  and  while  the  extreme  wing  would  not 
have  dared  to  desert  the  party,  the  moderate  men  would  have 
been  conciliated  by  the  refusal  of  the  franchise  to  the  blacks. 
A  foresight  of  the  future  of  the  nation  happily  prevailed  over 
a  more  taking  policy,  and,  to  the  honor  of  the  Republican 
leaders,  equal  franchise  was  the  result. 

The  one  great  issue  between  the  Radicals  and  the  Demo- 
crats since  the  conclusion  of  the  war  is  this :  the  "  Democ- 
racy" deny  that  the  readmission  to  Congress  of  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Southern  States  is  a  matter  of  expediency  at 
all ;  to  them  they  declare  that  it  is  a  matter  of  right.  There 
was  a  rebellion  in  certain  States  which  temporarily  prevented 
their  sending  representatives;  it  is  over,  and  their  men  must 
come.  Either  the  Union  is  or  is  not  dissolved ;  the  Radicals 
admit  that  it  is  not ;  that  all  their  endeavors  were  to  prevent 
the  Union  being  destroyed  by  rebels,  and  that  they  succeeded 
in  so  doing.  The  States,  as  States,  were  never  in  rebellion ; 
there  was  only  a  powerful  rebellion  localized  in  certain  States. 
"  If  you  admit,  then,"  say  the  Democrats,  "  that  the  Union  is 
not  dissolved,  how  can  you  govern  a  number  of  States  by  ma- 
jor-generals ?"  Meanwhile  the  Radicals  go  on,  not  wasting 
their  time  in  words,  but  passing  through  the  House  and  over 


208  Greater  Britain. 

the  President's  veto  the  legislation  necessary  for  the  recon- 
struction of  free  government — with  their  illogical,  but  thor- 
oughly English  good  sense,  avoiding  all  talk  about  constitu- 
tions that  are  obsolete,  and  laws  that  it  is  impossible  to  en- 
force, and  pressing  on  steadily  to  the  end  that  they  have  in 
view — equal  rights  for  all  men,  free  government  as  soon  as 
may  be.  The  one  thing  to  regret  is  that  the  Republicans 
have  not  the  courage  to  appeal  to  the  national  exigencies 
merely,  but  that  their  leaders  are  forced  by  public  opinion  to 
keep  up  the  sham  of  constitutionalism.  No  one  in  America 
seems  to  dream  that  there  can  be  any  thing  to  alter  in  the 
"matchless  Constitution,"  which  was  framed  by  a  body  of 
slave-owners,  filled  with  the  narrowest  aristocratic  prejudices, 
for  a  country  which  has  since  abolished  slavery,  and  become 
as  democratic  as  any  nation  in  the  world. 

The  system  of  presidential  election  and  the  Constitution  of 
the  Senate  are  matters  to  which  the  Republicans  will  turn 
their  attention  as  soon  as  the  country  is  rested  from  the  war. 
It  is  not  impossible  that  a  lifetime  may  see  the  abolition  of 
the  Presidency  proposed,  and  carried  by  the  vote  of  the  whole 
nation.  If  this  be  not  done,  the  election  will  come  to  be  made 
directly  by  the  people,  without  the  intervention  of  the  Elect- 
oral College.  The  Senate,  as  now  constituted,  rests  upon  the 
States,  and  that  State  Rights  are  doomed,  no  one  can  doubt 
who  remembers  that  of  the  population  of  New  York  State 
less  than  half  are  native-born  New  Yorkers.  What  concern 
can  the  cosmopolitan  moiety  of  her  people  have  with  the 
State  Rights  of  New  York  ?  When  a  system  becomes  purely 
artificial,  it  is  on  the  road  to  death ;  when  State  Rights  repre- 
sented the  various  sovereign  powers  which  the  old  States  had 
allowed  to  sleep  while  they  entered  a  federal  union,  State 
Rights  were  historical ;  but  now  that  Congress  by  a  single 
vote  cuts  and  carves  Territories  as  large  as  all  the  old  States 
put  together,  and  founds  new  commonwealths  in  the  wilder- 
ness, the  doctrine  is  worn  out. 

It  is  not  likely  that  the  Republicans  will  carry  all  before 
them  without  a  check ;  but  though  one  conservative  reaction 
may  follow  another,  although  time  after  time  the  Democrats 
may  return  victorious  from  the  fall  elections,  in  the  end  Radi- 
calism must  inevitably  win  the  day.     A  party  which  takes  for 


Republican  or  Democrat.  209 

its  watchword,  "  The  national  good,"  will  always  beat  the 
Constitutionalists. 

Except  during  some  groat  crisis,  the  questions  which  come 
most  home  at  election-times  in  a  democratic  country  are 
minor  points,  in  which  the  party  not  in  power  has  always  the 
advantage  over  the  office-holders :  it  is  on  these  petty  matter.s 
that  a  cry  of  jobbery  and  corruption  can  be  got  up,  and  noth- 
ing in  American  politics  is  more  taking  than  such  a  cry.  "  We 
are  a  liberal  people,  sir,"  said  a  Californian  to  me, "  but  among 
oiu*selves  we  don't  care  to  see  some  men  get  more  than  their 
share  of  Uncle  Sam's  money.  It  doesn't  go  down  at  election- 
time  to  say  that  the  Democrats  are  spoiling  the  country ;  but 
it's  a  mighty  strong  plank  that  you've  got  if  you  prove  that 
Hank  Andrews  has  made  a  million  of  dollars  by  the  last  Con- 
gressional job.  AYe  say, '  Smart  boy,  Hank  Andrews,'  but  we 
generally  vote  for  the  other  man."  It  is  these  small  ques- 
tions, or  "  side  issues,"  as  they  are  termed,  which  cause  the 
position  of  parties  to  fluctuate  frequently  in  certain  States. 
The  first  reaction  against  the  now  triumphant  Radicals  will 
probably  be  based  upon  the  indignation  excited  by  the  exten- 
sion of  Maine  liquor  laws  throughout  the  whole  of  the  States 
in  which  the  New  Englanders  have  the  mastery. 

Prohibitive  laws  are  not  supported  in  America  by  the  ar- 
guments with  which  all  of  us  in  Britain  are  familiar.  The 
New  England  Radicals  concede  that,  so  far  as  the  effects  of 
the  use  of  alcohol  are  strictly  personal,  there  is  no  ground  for 
the  interference  of  society.  They  go  even  farther,  and  say 
that  no  ground  for  general  and  indiscriminate  interference 
with  the  sale  of  liquor  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  drink 
maddens  certain  men,  and  causes  them  to  commit  crime. 
They  are  willing  to  admit  that,  were  the  evils  confined  to  in- 
dividuals, it  would  be  their  own  affair ;  but  they  attempt  to 
show  that  the  use  of  alcohol  affects  the  condition,  moral  and 
physical,  of  the  drinker's  offspring,  and  that  this  is  a  matter  so 
bound  up  with  the  general  weal,  that  public  interference  may 
be  necessary.  It  is  the  belief  of  a  majority  of  the  thinkers 
of  New  England  that  the  taint  of  alcoholic  poison  is  heredi- 
tary ;  that  the  children  of  drunkards  will  furnish  more  than 
the  ordinary  proportion  of  great  criminals  ;  that  the  descend- 
ants of  habitual  tipplers  will  bo  found  to  lack  Altai  force,  and 


210  Greater  Britain. 

will  fall  into  the  ranks  of  jiauperism  and  dependence :  not  only 
are  the  results  of  morbid  appetite,  they  say,  transmitted  to  the 
children,  but  the  appetites  themselves  descend  to  the  offspring 
with  the  blood.  If  this  be  true,  the  New  England  Radicals 
urge,  the  use  of  alcohol  becomes  a  moral  wrong,  a  crime  even, 
of  which  the  law  might  well  take  cognizance. 

We  are  often  told  that  party  organization  has  become  so 
dictatorial,  so  despotic  in  America,  that  no  one  not  chosen  by 
the  preliminary  convention,  no  one,  in  short,  whose  name  is 
not  upon  the  party  ticket,  has  any  chance  of  election  to  an  of- 
fice. To  those  who  reflect  upon  the  matter,  it  would  seem  as 
though  this  is  but  a  consequence  of  the  existence  of  party, 
and  of  the  system  of  local  representation :  in  England  itself 
the  like  abuse  is  not  unknown.  Where  neither  party  possesses 
overwhelming  strength,  division  is  failure  ;  and  some  knot  or 
other  of  pushing  men  must  be  permitted  to  make  the  selection 
of  a  candidate,  to  which,  when  made,  the  party  must  adhere, 
or  suffer  a  defeat.  As  to  the  composition  of  the  nominating 
conventions,  .the  grossest  mis-statements  have  been  made  to 
us  in  England,  for  we  have  been  gravely  assured  that  a  nation 
which  is  admitted  to  present  the  greatest  mass  of  education 
and  intelligence  with  the  smallest  intermixture  of  ignorance 
and  vice  of  which  the  world  has  knowledge,  allows  itself  to 
be  dictated  to  in  the  matter  of  the  choice  of  its  rulers  by 
caucuses  and  conventions  composed  of  the  idlest  and  most 
worthless  of  its  population.  Bribery,  we  have  been  told, 
reigns  supreme  in  these  assemblies;  the  nation's  interest  is 
but  a  phrase ;  individual  selfishness  the  true  dictator  of  each 
choice ;  the  name  of  party  is  but  a  cloak  for  private  ends,  and 
the  wire-pullers  are  equalled  in  rascality  only  by  their  nomi- 
nees. 

It  need  hardly  be  shown  that,  were  these  stories  true,  a 
people  so  full  of  patriotic  sentiment  as  that  which  lately  fur- 
nished a  million  and  a  half  of  volunteers  for  a  national  war, 
would  without  doubt  be  led  to  see  its  safety  in  the  destruc- 
tion of  conventions  and  their  wire-pullers — of  party  govern- 
ment itself,  if  necessary.  It  can  not  be  conceived  that  the 
American  people  would  allow  its  institutions  to  be  stultified, 
and  law  itself  insulted,  to  secure  the  temporary  triumph  of 
this  party  or  of  that,  on  any  mere  question  of  the  day. 


Republican  or  Democrat.  211 

The  secret  of  the  power  of  caucus  and  convention  is  gen- 
eral want  of  time  on  the  jiart  of  the  community.  Your  hon- 
est and  shrewd  Western  farmer,  not  having  himself  the  lei- 
sure to  select  his  candidate,  is  fain  to  let  caucus  or  convention 
choose  for  him.  In  practice,  however,  the  evil  is  far  from 
great :  the  party  caucus,  for  its  own  interest,  will,  on  the 
whole,  select  the  fittest  candidate  available,  and,  in  any  case, 
dares  not,  except  perhaps  in  New  York  City,  fix  its  choice 
upon  a  man  of  known  bad  character.  Even  where  Party  is 
most  despotic,  a  serious  mistake  committed  by  one  of  the 
nominating  conventions  will  seldom  fail  to  lose  its  side  so 
many  votes  as  to  secure  a  triumph  for  the  opponents. 

King  Caucus  is  a  great  monarch,  however ;  it  would  be  a 
mistake  to  despise  him,  and  conventions  are  dear  to  the 
American  people — at  least,  it  would  seem  so,  to  judge  from 
their  number.  Since  I  have  been  in  America,  there  have  been 
sitting,  besides  doubtless  a  hundred  others,  the  names  of 
which  I  have  not  noticed,  the  Philadelphia  "  Copper-Johnson 
Wigwam,"  or  assembly  of  the  Presidential  party  (of  which 
the  Radicals  say  that  it  is  but  "  the  Copperhead  organization 
with  a  fresh  snout"),  a  Dentists'  Convention,  a  Phrenological 
Convention,  a  Pomological  Congress,  a  School-teachers'  Con- 
vention, a  Fenian  Convention,  an  Eight-hour  Convention,  an 
Insurance  Companies'  Convention,  and  a  Loyal  Soldiers'  Con- 
vention. One  is  tempted  to  think  of  the  assemblies  in  '48  in 
Paris,  and  of  the  caricatures  representing  the  young  bloods 
of  the  Paris  Jockey  Club  being  addressed  by  their  Presi- 
dent as  "  Citoyens  Vicomtes,"  whereas,  when  the  cafe  waiters 
met  in  their  Congress,  it  was  "  Messieurs  les  Garcens-limo- 
nadiers." 

The  Pomological  Convention  was  an  extremely  jovial  one, 
all  the  horticulturists  being  whisky-growers  themselves,  and 
having  a  proper  wTish  to  compare  their  own  with  their  neigh- 
bors' "  Bourbon  "  or  "  old  rye."  Caucuses  or  (cauci :  which 
is  it  ?)  of  this  kind  suggest  a  derivation  of  this  name  for  what 
many  consider  a  low  American  proceeding,  from  an  equally 
low  Latin  word  of  similar  sound  and  spelling.  In  spite  of 
the  phrase  "  a  dry  caucus  "  being  not  unknown  in  the  temper- 
ance State  of  Maine,  many  might  be  inclined  to  think  that 
caucuses,  if  not   exactly   vessels   of   grace,  were   decidedly 


212  Greater  Britain. 

"  drinking-vessels  ;"  but  Americans  tell  you  that  the  word  is 
derived  from  the  phrase  a  "  calker's  meeting,"  calkers  being 
jieculiarly  given  to  noise. 

The  cry  against  conventions  is  only  a  branch  of  that  against 
"  politicians,"  which  is  continually  being  raised  by  the  ad- 
herents of  the  side  which  happens  at  the  moment  to  be  the 
weaker,  and  which  evidently  helps  to  create  the  evils  against 
which  its  authors  are  protesting.  It  is  now  the  New  York 
Democrats  who  tell  such  stories  as  that  of  the  Columbia  Dis- 
trict census-taker  going  to  the  Washington  house  of  a  wealthy 
Boston  man  to  find  out  his  religious  tenets.  The  door  was 
opened  by  a  black  boy,  to  whom  the  white  man  began : 
"  What's  your  name  ?"  "  Sambo,  sah,  am  my  Christian 
name."  "  Wall,  Sambo,  is  your  master  a  Christian?"  To 
which  Sambo's  indignant  answer  was,  "  No,  sah  !  Mass'  mem- 
ber ob  Congress,  sah  !"  When  the  Democrats  were  in  power, 
it  was  the  Republicans  of  Boston  and  the  Cambridge  pro- 
fessors who  threw  out  sly  hints,  and  violent  invectives,  too, 
against  the  whole  tribe  of  "  politicians."  Such  unreasoning 
outcries  are  to  be  met  only  by  bare  facts  ;  but  were  a  jury  of 
readers  of  the  debates  in  Parliament  and  in  Congress  to  be 
empanelled  to  decide  whether  political  immorality  were  not 
more  rife  in  England  than  in  America,  I  should,  for  my  part, 
look  forward  with  anxiety  to  the  result. 

The  organization  of  the  Republican  party  is  hugely  power- 
ful: it  has  its  branches  in  every  township  and  district  in  the 
Union  ;  but  it  is  strong,  not  in  the  wiles  of  crafty  plotters,  not 
in  the  devices  of  unknown  politicians,  but  in  the  hearts  of  the 
loyal  people  of  the  countiy.  If  there  were  nothing  else  to  be 
said  to  Englishmen  on  the  state  of  parties  in  America,  it 
should  be  sufficient  to  point  out  that,  while  the  "  Democracy  " 
claim  the  Mozart  faction  of  New  York  and  the  shoddy  aris- 
tocracy, the  pious  New  Englanders  and  their  sons  in  the 
North-west  are,  by  a  vast  majority,  Republicans ;  and  no  "  side 
issues  "  should  be  allowed  to  disguise  the  fact  that  the  Dem- 
ocratic is  the  party  of  New  York,  the  Republican  the  party  of 
America. 


BitoTiiEiis.  213 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

BROTHERS. 

I  had  landed  in  America  at  the  moment  of  what  is  known 
in  Canada  as  "  the  great  scare  " — that  is,  the  Fenian  invasion 
at  Fort  Erie.  Before  going  South,  I  had  attended  at  New 
York  a  Fenian  meeting  held  to  protest  against  the  conduct 
of  the  President  and  Mr.  Seward,  who,  it  was  asserted,  after 
deluding  the  Irish  with  promises  of  aid,  had  abandoned  them, 
and  even  seized  their  supplies  and  arms.  The  chief  speaker 
of  the  evening  was  Mr.  Gibbons,  of  Philadelphia,  "  Vice-pres- 
ident of  the  Irish  Republic,"  a  grave  and  venerable  man ;  no 
rogue  or  schemer,  but  an  enthusiast  as  evidently  convinced  of 
the  justice  as  of  the  certainty  of  the  ultimate  triumph  of  the 
cause. 

At  Chicago  I  went  to  the  monster  meeting  at  which  Speaker 
Colfax  addressed  the  Brotherhood ;  at  Buffalo  I  was  present 
at  the  "  armed  picnic  "  which  gave  the  Canadian  Government 
so  much  trouble.  On  Lake  Michigan  I  went  on  board  a 
Fenian  ship  ;  in  New  York  I  had  a  conversation  with  an  ex- 
rebel  officer,  a  long-haired  Georgian,  who  was  wearing  the 
Fenian  uniform  of  green  and  gold  in  the  public  streets.  The 
conclusion  to  which  I  came  was  that  the  Brotherhood  has  the 
support  of  ninety-nine  hundredths  of  the  Irish  in  the  States. 
As  we  are  dealing  not  with  British,  but  with  English  politics 
and  life,  this  is  rather  a  fact  to  be  borne  in  mind,  than  a  text 
upon  which  to  found  a  homily ;  still,  the  nature  of  the  Irish 
antipathy  to  Britain  is  worth  a  moment's  consideration,  and 
the  probable  effects  of  it  upon  the  future  of  the  race  is  a  mat- 
ter of  the  gravest  import. 

The  Fenians,  according  to  a  Chicago  member  of  the  Rob- 
erts wing,  seek  to  return  to  the  ancient  state  of  Ireland,  of 
which  we  find  the  history  in  the  Brehon  laws — a  communistic 
tenure  of  land  (resembling,  no  doubt,  that  of  the  Don  Cos- 
sacks), and  a  republic  or  elective  kingship.  Such  are  their 
objects;  nothing  else  will  in  the  least  conciliate  the  Irish  in 
America.     No  abolition  of  the  Establishment,  no  reform  of 


214  Greater  Britain. 

land-laws,  no  Parliament  on  College  Green,  nothing  that  En- 
gland can  grant  while  preserving  the  shadow  of  union,  can 
dissolve  the  Fenian  league. 

All  this  is  true,  and  yet  there  is  another  great  Irish  nation 
to  which,  if  you  turn,  you  find  that  conciliation  may  still  avail 
us.  The  Irish  in  Ireland  are  not  Fenians  in  the  American 
sense :  they  hate  us,  perhaps,  but  they  may  be  mollified  ;  they 
are  discontented,  but  they  may  be  satisfied ;  customs  and  prin- 
ciples of  law,  the  natural  growth  of  the  Irish  mind  and  the 
Irish  soil,  can  be  recognized,  and  made  the  basis  of  legislation, 
without  bringing  about  the  disruption  of  the  empire. 

The  first  Irish  question  that  we  shall  have  to  set  ourselves 
to  understand  is  that  of  land.  Permanent  tenure  is  as  natu- 
ral to  the  Irish,  as  freeholding  to  the  English  people.  All  that 
is  needed  of  our  statesmen  is  that  they  recognize  in  legislation 
that  which  they  can  not  but  admit  in  private  talk,  namely, 
that  there  maybe  essential  differences  between  race  and  race. 

The  results  of  legislation  which  proceeds  upon  this  basis 
may  follow  very  slowly  upon  the  change  of  system,  for  there 
is  at  present  no  nucleus  whatever  for  the  feeling  of  amity 
which  we  would  create.  Even  the  alliance  of  the  Irish  poli- 
ticians with  the  English  Radicals  is  merely  temporary;  the 
Irish  antipathy  to  the  English  does  not  distinguish  between 
Conservative  and  Radical.  Years  of  good  government  Avill 
be  needed  to  create  an  alliance  against  which  centuries  of  op- 
pression and  wrong-doing  protest.  "We  may  forget,  but  the 
Irish  will  hardly  find  themselves  able  to  forget  at  present  that, 
Avhile  we  make  New  Zealand  savages  British  citizens  as  well 
as  subjects,  protect  them  in  the  possession  of  their  lands,  and 
encourage  them  to  vote  at  our  polling-booths,  and  take  their 
place  as  constables  and  officers  of  the  law,  our  fathers  "  plant- 
ed "  Ireland,  and  declared  it  no  felony  to  kill  an  Irishman  on 
his  mother-soil. 

In  spite  of  their  possession  of  much  political  power,  and 
of  the  entire  city  government  of  several  great  towns,  the  Irish 
in  America  are  neither  physically  nor  morally  well  off. 
Whatever  may  be  the  case  at  some  future  day,  they  still  find 
themselves  politically  in  English  hands.  The  very  language 
that  they  are  compelled  to  speak  is  hateful,  even  to  men  who 
know  no  other.     With  an  impotent  spite  which  would  be 


Brothers.  215 

amusing  were  it  not  very  sad,  a  resolution  was  carried  by  ac- 
clamation through  botli  houses  of  the  Fenian  Congress  at 
Philadelphia  this  year  "that  the  word  'English'  be  unani- 
mously dropped,  and  that  the  words  'American  language'  be 
used  in  the  future." 

From  the  Cabinet,  from  Congress,  from  every  office,  high 
or  low,  not  controlled  by  the  Fenian  vote,  the  Irish  are  sys- 
tematically excluded ;  but  it  can  not  be  American  public  opin- 
ion which  has  prevented  the  Catholic  Irish  from  rising,  as 
merchants  and  traders,  even  in  New  York.  Yet,  while  there 
are  Belfast  names  high  up  on  the  Atlantic  side  and  in  San 
Francisco,  there  are  none  from  Cork,  none  from  the  southern 
countries.  It  would  seem  as  though  the  true  Irishman  wants 
the  perseverance  to  become  a  successful  merchant,  and  thrives 
best  at  pure  brain-work,  or  upon  land.  Three-fourths  of  the 
Irish  in  America  remain  in  towns,  losing  the  attachment  to  the 
soil  which  is  the  strongest  characteristic  of  the  Irish  in  Ireland, 
and  finding  no  new  home :  disgusted  at  their  exclusion  in 
America  from  political  life  and  power,  it  is  these  men  who 
turn  to  Fenianism  as  a  relief.  Through  drink,  through  gam- 
bling, and  the  other  vices  of  homeless,  thriftless  men,  they  are 
soon  reduced  to  beggary;  and,  moral  as  they  arc  by  nature, 
the  Irish  are  nevertheless  supplying  America  with  that  Avhich 
she  never  before  possessed — a  criminal  and  pauper  class.  Of 
10,000  people  sent  to  jail  each  year  in  Massachusetts,  6000  are 
Irish-born;  in  Chicago, out  of  the  3598  convicts  of  the  last 
year,  only  84  were  native-born  Americans. 

To  the  Americans,  Fenianism  has  many  aspects.  The 
greater  number  hate  the  Irish,  but  sympathize  profoundly  Avith 
Ireland.  Many  are  so  desirous  of  seeing  republicanism  prevail 
throughout  the  world  that  they  support  the  Irish  republic  in 
any  way,  except,  indeed,  by  taking  its  paper-money,  and  look 
upon  its  establishment  as  a  first  step  toward  the  erection  of  a 
free  government  that  shall  include  England  and  Scotland  as 
well.  Some  think  the  Fenians  will  burn  the  Capitol  and  rob 
the  banks  :  some  regard  them  with  satisfaction,  or  the  reverse, 
from  the  religious  point  of  view.  One  of  the  latter  kind  of 
lookers-on  said  to  me,  "  I  was  glad  to  see  the  Fenian  move- 
ment, not  that  I  wish  success  to  the  Brotherhood  as  against 
you  English,  but  because  I  rejoice  to  sec  among  Irishmen  a 


210  Greater  Britain. 

powerful  centre  of  resistance  to  the  Catholic  Church.  We, 
in  this  country,  were  being  delivered  over,  bound  hand  and 
foot,  to  the  Roman  Church,  and  these  Fenians,  by  their  power 
and  their  violence  against  the  priests,  have  divided  the  Irish 
camp,  and  rescued  us."  The  unfortunate  Canadians,  for  their 
part,  ask  why  they  should  be  shot  and  robbed  because  Britain 
maltreats  the  Irish ;  but  Ave  must  not  forget  that  the  Fenian 
raid  on  Canada  was  an  exact  repetition,  almost  on  the  same 
ground,  of  the  St.  Alban's  raid  into  the  American  territory  dur- 
ing the  rebellion. 

The  Fenians  would  be  as  absolutely  without  strength  in 
America  as  they  are  without  credit,  were  it  not  for  the  anti- 
British  traditions  of  the  Democratic  party,  and  the  rankling 
of  the  Alabama  question,  or,  rather,  of  the  remembrance  of 
our  general  conduct  during  the  rebellion,  in  the  hearts  of  the 
republicans.  It  is  impossible  to  spend  much  time  in  New  En- 
gland without  becoming  aware  that  the  people  of  the  six 
North-eastern  States  love  us  from  the  heart.  Nothing  but 
this  can  explain  the  character  of  their  feeling  toward  us  on 
these  Alabama  claims.  That  we  should  refuse  an  arbitration 
upon  the  whole  question  is  to  them  inexplicable,  and  they 
grieve  with  wondering  sorrow  at  our  perversity. 

It  is  not  here  that  the  legal  question  need  be  raised ;  for 
observers  of  the  present  position  of  the  English  race  it  is 
enough  that  there  exists  between  Britain  and  America  a  bar 
to  perfect  friendship — a  ground  for  future  quarrel — upon 
which  we  refuse  to  allow  an  all-embracing  arbitration.  "We 
allege  that  Ave  are  the  best  judges  of  a  certain  portion  of  the 
case,  that  our  dignity  would  be  compromised  by  arbitration 
upon  these  points;  but  such  dignity  must  always  be  com- 
promised by  arbitration,  for  common  friends  are  called  in  only 
when  each  party  to  the  dispute  has  a  case  in  the  justice  of 
which  his  dignity  is  bound  up.  Arbitration  is  resorted  to  as  a 
means  of  avoiding  wars  ;  and,  dignity  or  no  dignity,  every  thing 
that  can  cause  war  is  proper  matter  for  arbitration.  What 
even  if  some  little  dignity  be  lost  by  the  affair,  in  addition  to 
that  which  has  been  lost  already  ?  No  such  loss  can  be  set 
against  the  frightful  hurtfulness  to  the  race  and  to  the  cause 
of  freedom,  of  Avar  between  Britain  and  America. 

The  question  comes  plainly  enough  to  this  point :   "We  say 


Brothers.  217 

wc  are  right;  America  says  Ave  arc  wrong;  they  offer  arbi- 
tration, which  we  refuse  upon  a  point  of  etiquette — for  on  that 
ground  we  decline  to  refer  to  arbitration  a  point  which  to 
America  appears  essential.  It  looks  to  the  world  as  though 
Ave  offer  to  submit  to  the  umpire  chosen  those  points  only  on 
which  Ave  are  already  prepared  to  admit  that  Ave  are  in  the 
wrong.  America  asks  us  to  submit,  as  Ave  should  do  in  pri- 
vate life,  the  Avhole  correspondence  on  which  the  quarrel 
stands.  Even  if  Ave,  better  instructed  in  the  precedents  of  in- 
ternational law  than  were  the  Americans,  could  not  but  be  in 
the  right,  still,  as  Ave  knoAV  that  intelligent  and  able  men  in  the 
United  States  think  otherwise,  and  would  fancy  their  cause  the 
just  one  in  a  war  which  might  arise  upon  the  difficulty,  surely 
there  is  ground  for  arbitration.  It  Avould  be  to  the  eternal 
disgrace  of  civilization  that  Ave  should  set  to  work  to  cut  our 
brothers'  throats  upon  a  point  of  etiquette  ;  and  by  declining 
on  the  ground  of  honor  to  discuss  these  claims,  Ave  arc  com- 
promising that  honor  in  the  eyes  of  all  the  world. 

In  democracies  such  as  America  or  France,  every  citizen 
feels  an  insult  to  his  country  as  an  insult  to  himself.  The  Al- 
abama question  is  in  the  mouth  or  in  the  heart — AArhich  is 
Avorse — of  every  American  AATho  talks  with  an  Englishman  in 
England  or  America. 

All  nations  commit  at  times  the  error  of  acting  as  though 
they  think  that  CA*ery  people  on  earth  except  themselves  are 
unanimous  in  their  policy.  Neglecting  the  race  distinctions 
and  the  class  distinctions  AAThich  in  England  are  added  to  the 
universal  essential  differences  of  minds,  the  Americans  are  con- 
vinced that,  during  the  late  war,  Ave  thought  as  one  man,  and 
that,  in  this  present  matter  of  the  Alabama  claims,  we  stand 
out  and  act  as  a  united  people. 

A  ISTcav  Yorker  with  AAThom  I  staid  at  Quebec — a  shrewd 
but  kindly  fellow — was  an  odd  instance  of  the  American  inca- 
pacity to  understand  the  British  nation  which  almost  equals 
our  oaa'u  in  ability  to  comprehend  America.  Kind  and  hospit- 
able to  me,  as  is  any  American  to  every  Englishman  in  all 
times  and  places,  he  detested  British  policy,  and  obstinately 
refused  to  see  that  there  is  an  England  larger  than  DoAATiing 
Street,  a  nation  outside  Pall  Mall.  "  England  Avas  with  the 
rebels  throughout  the  war."     "  Excuse  me ;  our  ruling  classes 

K 


218  Greater  Britain. 

were  so,  perhaps,  but  our  rulers  don't  represent  us  any  more 
than  your  39th  Congress  represents  George  Washington."  In 
America,  where  Congress  does  fairly  represent  the  nation,  and 
where  there  has  never  been  less  than  a  quarter  of  the  body  fa- 
vorable to  any  policy  which  half  the  nation  supported,  men 
can  not  understand  that  there  should  exist  a  country  which 
thinks  one  way,  but,  through  her  rulers,  speaks  another.  We 
may  disown  the  national  policy,  but  we  suffer  for  it. 

The  hospitality  to  any  Englishman  of  the  American  En- 
gland-hater is  extraordinary.  An  old  Southerner  in  Richmond 
said  to  me,  in  a  breath,  "  I'd  go  and  live  in  England  if  I  didn't 
hate  it  as  I  do.  England,  sir,  betrayed  us  in  the  most  scoun- 
drelly way — talked  of  sympathy  with  the  South,  and  stood  by 
to  see  us  swallowed  up.     I  hate  England,  sir  !     Come  and  stay 

a  week  with  me  at  my  place  in County.     Going  South 

to-day?  W ell,  then, you  return  this  way  next  week.  Come 
then  !     Come  on  Saturday  week." 

When  we  ask,  "Why  do  you  press  the  Alabama  claims 
against  us,  and  not  the  Florida,  the  Georgia,  and  the  Rappa- 
hannock claims  against  the  French  ?"  the  answer  is,  "  Because 
Ave  don't  care  about  the  French,  and  what  they  do  and  think ; 
besides,  Ave  oavo  them  some  courtesy  after  bundling  them  out 
of  Mexico  in  the  Avay  we  did."  But  in  truth  there  is  among 
Americans  an  exaggerated  estimate  of  the  offensive  powers 
of  Great  Britain;  and  such  is  the  jealousy  of  young  nations, 
that  this  exaggeration  becomes  of  itself  a  cause  of  danger. 
Were  the  Americans  as  fully  convinced,  as  we  ourselves  are, 
of  our  total  incapacity  to  carry  on  a  land-war  Avith  the  United 
States  on  the  Avestern  side  of  the  Atlantic,  the  bolder  spirits 
among  them  would  cease  to  feel  themselves  under  an  assumed 
necessity  to  sIioav  us  our  OAvn  Aveakness  and  their  own  strength. 

The  chief  reason  Avhy  America  finds  much  to  offend  her  in 
our  conduct  is  that  shecares  for  the  opinion  of  no  other  peo- 
ple than  the  English.  America,  before  the  terrible  bloAV  to 
her  confidence  and  love  that  our  conduct  during  the  rebellion 
gave,  used  morally  to  lean  on  England.  Happily  for  herself, 
she  is  noAV  emancipated  from  the  mental  thraldom ;  but  she 
still  yearns  tOAvard  our  kindly  friendship.  A  Napoleonic  sen- 
ator harangues,  a  French  paper  declaims  against  America  and 
Americans ;  avIio  cares  ?     But  a  Times  leader,  or  a  speech  in 


Brothers.  219 

Parliament  from  a  minister  of  the  Crown  cuts  to  the  heart, 
wounding  terribly.  A  nation,  like  an  individual,  never  quar- 
rels with  a  stranger ;  there  must  he  love  at  bottom  for  even 
querulousness  to  arise.  While  I  was  in  Boston,  one  of  the 
foremost  writers  of  America  said  to  me  in  conversation, "  I 
have  no  son, but  I  had  a  nephew  of  my  own  name;  a  grand 
fellow;  young,  handsome,  winning  in  his  ways,  full  of  family 
affections,  an  ardent  student.  lie  felt  it  his  duty  to  go  to  the 
front  as  a  private  in  one  of  our  regiments  of  Massachusetts 
volunteers,  and  Avas  promoted  for  bravery  to  a  captaincy.  All 
of  us  here  looked  on  him  as  a  New  England  Philip  Sidney,  the 
type  of  all  that  was  manly,  chivalrous,  and-  noble.  The  very 
day  that  I  received  news  of  his  being  killed  in  leading  his 
company  against  a  regiment,  I  was  forced  by  my  duties  here 
to  read  a  leader  in  one  of  your  chief  papers  upon  the  officering 
of  our  army,  in  which  it  was  more  than  hinted  that  our  troops 
consisted  of  German  cut-throats  and  pot-house  Irish,  led  by 
sharpers  and  broken  politicians.  Can  you  wonder  at  my  be- 
ing bitter  ?" 

That  there  must  be  in  America  a  profound  feeling  of  affec- 
tion for  our  country  is  shown  by  the  avoidance  of  war  when 
we  recognized  the  rebels  as  belligerents,  and  again,  at  the  time 
of  the  "  Trent "  affair,  when  the  surface-cry  was  overwhelm- 
ingly for  battle,  and  the  Cabinet  only  able  to  tide  it  over  by 
promising  the  West  war  with  England  as  soon  as  the  rebellion 
was  put  down.  "  One  war  at  a  time,  gentlemen,"  said  Lincoln. 
The  man  Avho,  of  all  in  America,  had  most  to  lose  by  Avar  with 
England,  said  to  me  of  the  "  Trent "  affair, "  lAvas  written  to  by 

C to  do  all  I  could  for  peace.     I  Avrote  him  back  that  if 

our  Attorney-general  decided  that  our  seizure  of  the  men  Avas 
lawful,  I  would  spend  my  last  dollar  in  the  cause." 

The  Americans,  everywhere  affectionate  tOAvard  the  indi- 
vidual Englishman,  make  no  secret  of  their  feeling  that  the 
first  advances  tOAvard  a  renewal  of  the  national  friendship 
ought  to  come  from  us.  They  might  remind  us  that  our  Ma- 
ori subjects  have  a  proverb, "  Let  friends  settle  their  disputes 
as  friends." 


220  Greater  Britain. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

AMERICA. 

We  arc  coasting  again,  gliding  through  calm,  blue  waters, 
watching  the  dolphins  as  they  play,  and  the  boobies  as  they 
fly,  stroke  and  stroke,  with  the  paddles  of  the  ship.  On  the 
right  mountains  rise  through  the  warm  misty  air,  and  form  a 
long  towering  line  upon  the  upper  skies.  Hanging  high  above 
us  are  the  volcano  of  fire  and  that  of  water — twin  menacers 
of  Guatemala  City.  In  the  sixteenth  century  the  water- 
mountain  drowned  it ;  in  the  eighteenth  it  was  burnt  by  the 
fire-hill.  Since  then  the  city  has  been  shaken  to  pieces  by 
earthquakes,  and  of  sixty  thousand  men  and  women,  hardly 
one  escaped.  Down  the  valley,  between  the  peaks,  we  have 
through  the  mahogany  groves  an  exquisite  distant  view  to- 
ward the  city.  Once  more  passing  on,  we  get  peeps,  now  of 
West  Honduras,  and  now  of  the  island  coffee  plantations  of 
Costa  Rica.  The  heat  is  terrible.  It  was  just  here,  if  we  are 
to  believe  Drake,  that  he  fell  in  with  a  shower  so  hot  and 
scalding  that  each  drop  burnt  its  hole  through  his  men's 
clothes  as  they  hung  up  to  dry.  "  Steep  stories,"  it  is  clear, 
were  known  before  the  plantation  of  America! 

Now  that  the  time  has  come  for  a  leave-taking  of  the  con- 
tinent, we  can  begin  to  reflect  upon  facts  gleaned  during  visits 
to  twenty-nine  of  the  forty-five  Territories  and  States — twenty- 
nine  empires  the  size  of  Spain. 

A  man  may  see  American  countries,  from  the  pine-wastes 
of  Maine  to  the  slopes  of  the  Sierra ;  may  talk  with  American 
men  and  women,  from  the  sober  citizens  of  Boston  to  Digger 
Indians  in  California ;  may  eat  of  American  dishes,  from  jerked 
buffalo  in  Colorado  to  clam-bakes  on  the  shores  near  Salem ; 
and  yet,  from  the  time  he  first  "  smells  the  molasses "  at 
Nantucket  light-ship  to  the  moment  when  the  pilot  quits  him 
at  the  Golden  Gate,  may  have  no  idea  of  an  America.  You 
may  have  seen  the  East,  the  South,  the  West,  the  Pacific  States, 
and  yet  have  failed  to  find  America.  It  is  not  till  you  have 
left  her  shores  that  her  image  grows  up  m  the  mind. 


America.  221 

The  first  thing  that  strikes  the  Englishman  just  landed  in 
New  York  is  the  apparent  Latinization  of  the  English  in 
America ;  but  before  he  leaves  the  country,  he  comes  to  see 
that  this  is  at  most  a  local  fact,  and  that  the  true  moral  of 
America  is  the  vigor  of  the  English  race — the  defeat  of  the 
cheaper  by  the  dearer  peoples,  the  victory  of  the  man  whose 
food  costs  four  shillings  a  day  over  the  man  whose  food  costs 
four  pence.  Excluding  the  Atlantic  cities,  the  English  in 
America  are  absorbing  the  Germans  and  the  Celts,  destroying 
the  Red  Indians,  and  checking  the  advance  of  the  Chinese. 

The  Saxon  is  the  only  extirpating  race  oil  earth.  Up  to 
the  commencement  of  the  now  inevitable  destruction  of  the 
Red  Indians  of  Central  North  America,  of  the  Maories,  and 
of  the  Australians  by  the  English  colonists,  no  numerous  race 
had  ever  been  blotted  out  by  an  invader.  The  Danes  and 
Saxons  amalgamated  with  the  Britons,  the  Goths  and  Bur- 
gundians  with  the  Gauls :  the  Spaniards  not  only  never  anni- 
hilated a  people,  but  have  themselves  been  all  but  completely 
expelled  by  the  Indians,  in  Mexico  and  South  America.  The 
Portuguese  in  Ceylon,  the  Dutch  in  Java,  the  French  in  Canada 
and  Algeria,  have  conquered  but  not  killed  off  the  native  peo- 
ples. Hitherto  it  has  been  nature's  rule  that  the  race  that 
peopled  a  country  in  the  earliest  historic  days  should  people  it 
to  the  end  of  time.  The  American  problem  is  this :  Does  the 
law,  in  a  modified  shape,  hold  good,  in  spite  of  the  destruction 
of  the  native  population  ?  It  is  true  that  the  negroes,  now 
that  they  are  free,  are  commencing  slowly  to  die  out — that  the 
New  Englanders  are  dying  fast,  and  their  places  being  sup- 
plied by  immigrants  ?  Can  the  English  in  America,  in  the 
long  run,  survive  the  common  fate  of  all  migrating  races  ?  Is 
it  true  that,  if  the  American  settlers  continue  to  exist,  it  will 
be  at  the  price  of  being  no  longer  English,  but  Red  Indian  ? 
It  is  certain  that  the  English  families  long  in  the  land  have 
the  features  of  the  extirpated  race ;  on  the  other  hand,  in  the 
negroes  there  is  at  present  no  trace  of  any  change,  save  in 
their  becoming  dark  brown  instead  of  black. 

The  Maories — an  immigrant  race — were  dying  off  in  New 
Zealand  when  we  landed  there.  The  Red  Indians  of  Mexico 
— another  immigrant  people — had  themselves  undergone  de- 
cline, numerical  and  moral,  when  we  first  became  acquainted 


222  Greater  Britain. 

with  them.  Are  we  English  in  turn  to  degenerate  abroad, 
under  pressure  of  a  great  natural  law  forbidding  change  ?  It 
is  easy  to  say  that  the  English  in  Old  England  are  not  a  na- 
tive, but  an  immigrant  race ;  that  they  show  no  symptoms  of 
decline.  There,  however,  the  change  was  slight,  the  distance 
short,  the  difference  of  climate  small. 

The  rapidity  of  the  disappearance  of  physical  type  is  equal- 
led at  least,  if  not  succeeded,  by  that  of  the  total  alteration 
of  the  moral  characteristics  of  the  immigrant  races — the  en- 
tire destruction  of  eccentricity,  in  short.  The  change  that 
comes  over  those  among  the  Irish  who  do  not  remain  in  the 
great  towns  is  not  greater  than  that  which  overtakes  the  En- 
glish hand-workers,  of  whom  some  thousands  reach  America 
each  year.  Gradually  settling  down  on  land,  and  finding  them- 
selves lost  in  a  sea  of  intelligence,  and  freed  from  the  inspir- 
ing obstacles  of  antiquated  institutions  and  class  prejudice,  the 
English  handicraftsman,  ceasing  to  be  roused  to  aggressive 
Radicalism  by  the  opposition  of  sinister  interests,  merges  into 
the  contented  homestead  settler  or  adventurous  backwoods- 
man. Greater  even  than  this  revolution  of  character  is  that 
which  falls  upon  the  Celt.  Not  only  is  it  a  fact  known  alike 
to  physiologists  and  statisticians,  that  the  children  of  Irish 
parents  born  in  America  are,  physically,  not  Irish,  but  Ameri- 
cans, but  the  like  is  true  of  the  moral  type  :  the  change  in  this 
is  at  least  as  sweeping.  The  son  of  Fenian  Pat  and  bright- 
eyed  Biddy  is  the  normal,  gaunt  American,  quick  of  thought, 
but  slow  of  speech,  whom  we  have  begun  to  recognize  as  the 
latest  production  of  the  Saxon  race,  when  housed  upon  the 
Western  prairies,  or  in  the  pine  woods  of  New  England. 

For  the  moral  change  in  the  British  workmen  it  is  not 
difficult  to  account ;  the  man  who  will  leave  country,  home, 
and  friends,  to  seek  new  fortunes  in  America,  is  essentially 
not  an  ordinary  man.  As  a  rule,  he  is  above  the  average  in 
intelligence,  or,  if  defective  in  this  point,  he  makes  up  for 
lack  of  wit  by  the  possession  of  concentrativeness  and  energy. 
Such  a  man  will  have  pushed  himself  to  the  front  in  his  club, 
his  union,  or  his  shop,  before  he  emigrates.  In  England  he 
is  somebody ;  in  America  he  finds  all  hands  contented,  or,  if 
not  this,  at  all  events  too  busy  to  complain  of  such  ills  as  they 
profess  to  labor  under.     Among  contented  men,  his  equals 


America.  223 

both  in  intelligence  and  ambition,  in  a  country  of  perfect 
freedom  of  speecb,  of  manners,  of  laws,  and  of  society,  the 
occupation  of  his  mind  is  gone,  and  he  comes  to  think  him- 
self what  others  seem  to  think  him — a  nobody ;  a  man  who 
no  longer  is  a  living  force.  He  settles  upon  land ;  and  when 
the  world  knows  him  no  more,  his  children  are  happy  corn- 
growers  in  his  stead. 

The  shape  of  North  America  makes  the  existence  of  dis- 
tinct peoples  within  her  limits  almost  impossible.  An  upturn- 
ed bowl,  with  a  mountain-rim,  from  which  the  streams  run  in- 
ward toward  the  centre,  she  must  fuse  together  all  the  races 
that  settle  within  her  borders,  and  the  fusion  must  now  be  in 
an  English  mould. 

There  are  homogeneous  foreign  populations  in  several  por- 
tions of  the  United  States ;  not  only  the  Irish  and  Chinese, 
at  whose  prospects  we  have  already  glanced,  but  also  Ger- 
mans in  Pennsylvania,  Spanish  in  "Florida,  French  in  Louisiana 
and  at  Sault  do  St.  Marie.  In  Wisconsin  there  is  a  Nor- 
wegian population  of  over  a  hundred  thousand,  retaining 
their  own  language  and  their  own  architecture,  and  present- 
ing the  appearance  of  a  tough  morsel  for  the  English  to  di- 
gest; at  the  same  time,  the  Swedes  were  the  first  settlers  of 
Delaware  and  New  Jersey,  and  there  they  have  disappeared. 

Milwaukee  is  a  Norwegian  town.  The  houses  are  narrow 
and  high,  the  windows  many,  with  circular  tops  ornamented 
in  wood  or  dark-brown  stone,  and  a  heavy  wooden  cornice 
crowns  the  front.  The  churches  have  the  wooden  bulb  and 
spire  which  are  characteristic  of  the  Scandinavian  public  build- 
ings. The  Norwegians  will  not  mix  with  other  races,  and  in- 
variably flock  to  spots  where  there  is  already  a  large  popula- 
tion speaking  their  own  tongue.  Those  who  enter  Canada 
generally  become  dissatisfied  Avith  the  country,  and  pass  on 
into  Wisconsin  or  Minnesota,  but  the  Canadian  Government 
has  now  under  its  consideration  a  plan  for  founding  a  Nor- 
wegian colony  on  Lake  Huron.  The  numbers  of  this  people 
are  not  so  great  as  to  make  it  important  to  inquire  whether 
they  will  ever  merge  into  the  general  population.  Analogy 
would  lead  us  to  expect  that  they  will  be  absorbed ;  their  ex- 
istence is  not  historical,  like  that  of  the  French  in  Lower 
Canada. 


224  Greater  Britain. 

From  Burlington,  in  Iowa,  I  had  visited  a  spot  the  history 
of  -which  is  typical  of  the  development  of  America — Nauvoo. 
Founded  in  1840  by  Joe  Smith,  the  Mormon  city  stood  upon 
a  bluff  overhanging  the  Des  Moines  Rapids  of  the  Mississippi, 
presenting  on  the  land-side  the  aspect  of  a  gentle,  graceful 
(dope  surmounted  by  a  plain.  After  the  fanatical  pioneers  of 
English  civilization  had  been  driven  from  the  city  and  their 
temple  burned,  there  came  Cabet's  Icarian  band,  who  tried  to 
found  a  new  France  in  the  desert;  but  in  1856  the  leader 
died,  and  his  people  dispersed  themselves  about  the  States  of 
Iowa  and  Missouri.  Next  came  the  English  settlers,  active, 
thriving,  regardless  of  tradition,  and  Nauvoo  is  entering  on  a 
new  life  as  the  capital  of  a  wine-growing  country.  I  found 
Cabet  and  the  Mormons  alike  forgotten.  The  ruins  of  the 
temple  have  disappeared,  and  the  huge  stones  have  been  used 
up  in  cellars,  built  to  contain  the  Hock — a  pleasant  wine,  like 
Zeltinger. 

The  bearing  upon  religion  of  the  gradual  destruction  of 
race  is  of  great  moment  to  the  world.  Christianity  will  gain 
by  the  change ;  but  which  of  its  many  branches  will  receive 
support  is  a  question  which  only  admits  of  an  imperfect  an- 
swer. Arguing  d  priori,  we  should  expect  to  find  that,  on 
the  one  hand,  a  tendency  toward  unity  would  manifest  itself, 
taking  the  shape,  perhaps,  of  a  gain  of  strength  by  the  Catholic 
and  Anglican  churches ;  on  the  other  hand,  there  would  be 
a  contrary  and  still  stronger  tendency  toward  an  infinite  mul- 
tiplication of  beliefs,  till  millions  of  men  and  women  would 
become  each  of  them  his  own  Church.  Coming  to  the  actual 
cases  in  which  Ave  can  trace  the  tendencies  that  commence  to 
manifest  themselves,  we  find  that  in  America  the  Anglican 
Church  is  gaining  ground,  especially  on  the  Pacific  side,  and 
that  the  Catholics  do  not  seem  to  meet  Avith  any  such  success 
as  Ave  should  have  looked  for ;  retaining,  indeed,  their  hold 
over  the  Irish  Avomen  and  a  portion  of  the  men,  and  having 
their  historic  French  branches  in  Louisiana  and  in  Canada,  but 
not,  unless  it  be  in  the  cities  of  Ncav  York  and  Philadelphia, 
making  much  Avny  among  the  English. 

Between  San  Francisco  and  Chicago,  for  religious  purposes 
the  most  cosmopolitan  of  cities,  Ave  have  to  draw  distinctions. 
In  the  Pacific  city,  the  disturbing  cause  is  the  presence  of 


America.  225 

New  Yorkers;  in  the  metropolis  of  the  North-western  States, 
it  is  the  dominance  of  New  England  ideas  :  still,  we  shall  find 
no  two  cities  so  free  from  local  color,  and  from  the  influence 
of  race.  The  result  of  an  examination  is  not  encouraging :  in 
both  cities  there  is  much  external  show  in  the  shape  of  Church 
attendance ;  in  neither  does  religion  strike  its  roots  deeply 
into  the  hearts  of  the  citizens,  except  so  far  as  it  is  alien  and 
imported. 

The  Spiritualist  and  Unitarian  Churches  are  both  of  them 
in  Chicago  extremely  strong :  they  support  newspapers  and 
periodicals  of  their  own,  and  are  led  by  men  of  remarkable 
ability  and  energy,  but  they  are  not  the  less  Cambridge  Uni- 
tarianism,  Boston  Spiritualism  ;  there  is  nothing  of  the  North- 
west about  them.  In  San  Francisco,  on  the  other  hand,  An- 
glicanism is  prospering,  but  it  is  New  York  Episcopalianism, 
sustained  by  immigrants  and  money  from  the  East;  in  no 
sense  is  it  a  Californian  Church. 

Throughout  America  the  multiplication  of  churches  is 
rapid,  but,  among  the  native-born  Americans,  Supernaturalism 
is  advancing  with  great  strides.  The  Shakers  are  strong  in 
thought,  the  Spiritualists  in  wealth  and  numbers ;  Communism 
gains  ground,  but  not  Polygamy — the  Mormon  is  a  purely 
European  Church. 

There  is  just  now  progressing  in  America  a  great  move- 
ment, headed  by  the  "  Radical  Unitarians,"  toward  "  free  re- 
ligion," or  church  without  creed.  The  leaders  deny  that 
there  is  sufficient  security  for  the  spread  of  religion  in  each 
man's  individual  action;  they  desire  collective  work  by  all 
free-thinkers  and  liberal  religionists  in  the  direction  of  truth 
and  purity  of  life.  Christianity  is  higher  than  dogma,  we  are 
told :  there  is  no  way  out  of  infinite  multiplication  of  creeds 
but  by  their  total  extirpation.  Oneness  of  purpose  and  a 
common  love  for  truth  form  the  members'  only  tie.  Elder 
Frederick  Evans  said  to  me,  "All  truth  forms  part  of  Shaker- 
ism;"  but  these  free  religionists  assure  us  that  in  all  truth 
consists  their  sole  religion. 

The  distinctive  feature  of  these  American  philosophical 
and  religious  systems  is  their  gigantic  width :  for  instance, 
every  human  being  who  admits  that  disembodied  spirits  may 
in  any  way  hold  intercourse  with  dwellers  upon  earth,  what- 

K  2 


226  Greater  Britain. 

ever  else  lie  may  believe  or  disbelieve,  is  claimed  by  the  Spir- 
itualists as  a  member  of  their  Church.  They  tell  us  that  by 
"Spiritualism  they  understand  whatever  bears  relation  to 
spirit ;"  their  system  embraces  all  existence,  brute,  human,  and 
divine ;  in  fact, "  the  real  man  is  a  spirit."  According  to  these 
ardent  proselytizers,  every  poet,  every  man  with  a  grain  of 
imagination  in  his  nature,  is  a  "  Spiritualist."  They  claim 
Plato,  Socrates,  Milton,  Shakspeare,  Washington  Irving, 
Charles  Dickens,  Luther,  Melanchthon,  Paul,  Stephen,  the 
whole  of  the  Hebrew  prophets,  Homer,  and  John  "Wesley, 
among  the  members  of  their  Church.  They  have  lately  can- 
onized new  saints :  St.  Confucius,  St.  Theodore  (Parker),  St. 
Ralph  (Waldo  Emerson),  St.  Emma  (Hardinge),  all  figure  in 
their  calendar.  It  is  a  noteworthy  fact  that  the  saints  are 
mostly  resident  in  New  England. 

The  tracts  published  at  the  Spiritual  Clarion  office,  Au- 
burn, New  York,  put  forward  Spiritualism  as  a  religion  which 
is  to  stand  toward  existing  churches  as  did  Christianity  to- 
ward Judaism,  and  announce  a  new  dispensation  to  the  peo- 
ples of  the  earth  "  who  have  sown  their  wild  oats  in  Chris- 
tianity," but  they  spell  supersede  with  a  "  c." 

"  This  strange  religion  has  long  since  left  behind  the  rap- 
pings  and  table-turnings  in  which  it  took  its  birth.  The  se- 
cret of  its  success  is  that  it  supplies  to  every  man  the  satisfac- 
tion of  the  universal  craving  for  the  supernatural  in  any  form 
in  which  he  will  receive  it.  The  Spiritualists  claim  two  mil- 
lions of  active  believers  and  five  million  "  favorers  "  in  Amer- 
ica. 

The  presence  of  a  large  German  population  is  thought  by 
some  to  have  an  important  bearing  on  the  religious  future  of 
America,  but  the  Germans  have  hitherto  kept  themselves  apart 
from  the  intellectual  progress  of  the  nation.  They  for  the 
most  part  withdraw  from  towns,  and  retaining  their  language 
and  supporting  local  papers  of  their  own,  live  out  of  the  world 
of  American  literature,  politics,  and  thought,  taking,  however, 
at  rare  intervals,  a  patriotic  part  in  national  affairs,  as  was 
notably  the  case  at  the  time'  of  the  late  rebellion.  Living  thus 
by  themselves,  they  have  even  less  influence  upon  American 
religious  thought  than  have  the  Irish,  who,  speaking  the  En- 
glish tongue,  and  dwelling  almost  exclusively  in   towns,  are 


•     America.  227 

brought  more  into  contact  with  the  "daily  life  of  the  republic. 
The  Germans  in  America  are  in  the  main  pure  materialists, 
under  a  certain  show  of  deism ;  but  hitherto  there  has  been 
no  alliance  between  them  and  the  powerful  Chicago  Radical 
Unitarians — difference  of  language  having  thus  far  proved  a 
bar  to  the  formation  of  a  league  which  would  otherwise  have 
been  inevitable. 

On  the  whole,  it  would  seem  that  for  the  moment  religious 
prospects  are  not  bright ;  the  tendency  is  rather  toward  intense 
and  unheathily  developed  feeling  in  the  few,  and  subscription  to 
some  one  of  the  Episcopalian  Churches — Catholic,  Anglican, 
or  Methodist — among  the  many,  coupled  with  real  indifference. 
Neither  the  tendency  to  unity  of  creeds  nor  that  toward  infi- 
nite multiplication  of  beliefs  has  yet  made  that  progress  which 
abstract  speculation  would  have  led  us  to  expect.  So  far  as 
we  can  judge  from  the  few  facts  before  us,  there  is  much  like- 
lihood that  multiplication  will  in  the  future  prove  too  strong 
for  unity. 

After  all,  there  is  not  in  America  a  greater  wonder  than  the 
Englishman  himself,  for  it  is  to  this  continent  that  you  must 
come  to  find  him  in  full  possession  of  his  powers.  Two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  millions  of  people  speak  or  are  ruled  by  those 
who  speak  the  English  tongue,  and  inhabit  a  third  of  the 
habitable  globe ;  but  at  the  present  rate  of  increase,  in  sixty 
years  there  will  be  two  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  English- 
men dwelling  in  the  United  States  alone.  America  has  some- 
what grown  since  the  time  when  it  Avas  gravely  proposed  to 
call  her  Alleghania,  after  a  chain  of  mountains  which,  looking 
from  this  western  side,  may  be  said  to  skirt  her  eastern  bor- 
der, and  the  loftiest  peaks  of  which  arc  but  half  the  height  of 
the  very  passes  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

America  is  becoming,  not  English  merely,  but  world-em- 
bracing in  the  variety  of  its  type  ;  and  as  the  English  element 
has  given  language  and  history  to  that  land,  America  offers  the 
English  race  the  moral  directorship  of  the  globe,  by  ruling 
mankind  through  Saxon  institutions  and  the  English  tongue. 
Through  America  England  is  speaking  to  the  world. 


PART   II.— POLYNESIA. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PITCAIRN  ISLAND. 


Panama  is  a  picturesque,  time-worn  Spanish  city,  that  rises 
abruptly  from  the  sea  in  a  confused  pile  of  decaying  bastions 
and  decayed  cathedrals,  while  a  dense  jungle  of  mangrove  and 
bamboo  threatens  to  bury  it  in  rich  greenery.  The  forest  is 
filled  with  baboons  and  lizards  of  gigantic  size,  and  is  gay 
with  the  bright  plumage  of  the  toucans  and  macaws,  while, 
within  the  walls,  every  house-top  bears  its  living  load  of  hide- 
ous turkey-buzzards,  foul-winged  and  bloodshot-eyed. 

It  was  the  rainy  season  (which  here,  indeed,  lasts  for  three- 
quarters  of  the  year),  and  each  day  was  an  alternation  of 
shower-bath,  and  vapor-bath  with  sickly  sun.  On  the  first 
night  of  my  stay  there  was  a  lunar  rainbow,  which  I  went  on 
to  the  roof  of  the  hotel  to  watch.  The  misty  sky  was  white 
with  the  reflected  light  of  the  hidden  moon,  which  was  ob- 
scured by  an  inky  cloud,  that  seemed  a  tunnel  through  the 
heavens.  In  a  few  minutes  I  was  driven  from  my  post  by 
the  tropical  rain. 

At  the  railway  station  I  parted  from  my  Californian  friends, 
who  were  bound  for  Aspinwall,  and  thence  by  steamer  to  New 
York.  A  stranger  scene  it  has  not  often  been  my  fortune  to 
behold.  There  can  not  have  been  less  than  a  thousand  natives, 
wearing  enormous  hats  and  little  else,  and  selling  every  thing 
from  linen  suits  to  the  last  French  novel.  A  tame  jaguar,  a 
pelican,  parrots,  monkeys,  pearls,  shells,  flowers,  green  cocoa- 
nuts  and  turtles,  mangoes  and  wild  dogs,  were  among  the 
things  for  sale.  The  station  was  guarded  by  the  army  of  the 
Republic  of  New  Granada,  consisting  of  five  officers,  a  bugler, 
a  drummer,  and  nineteen  men.      Six   of  the  men  wore   red 


Pitcairn  Island.  229 

trowsers  and  dirty  shirts  for  uniform ;  the  rest  dressed  as 
they  pleased,  which  was  generally  in  Adaraic  style.  Not  even 
the  officers  had  shoes  ;  and  of  the  twenty-one  men,  one  was  a 
full-blooded  Indian,  some  ten  were  negroes,  and  the  remainder 
nondescripts,  but  among  them  was,  of  course,  an  Irishman  from 
Cork  or  Kilkenny.  After  the  train  had  started,  the  troops 
formed,  and  marched  briskly  through  the  town,  the  drummer 
trotting  along  some  twenty  yards  before  the  company,  French 
fashion,  and  beating  the  retraite.  The  French  invalids  from 
Acapulco,  who  were  awaiting  in  Panama  the  arrival  of  an  im- 
perial frigate  at  Asp  in  wall,  stood  in  the  streets  to  see  the  New 
Granadians  pass,  twirling  their  mustaches,  and  smiling  grim- 
ly. One  old  drum-major,  lean  and  worn  with  fever,  turned 
to  me,  and,  shrugging  his  shoulders,  pointed  to  his  side :  the 
Granadians  had  their  bayonets  tied  on  with  string. 

Whether  Panama  will  continue  to  hold  its  present  position 
as  the  "gate  of  the  Pacific"  is  somewhat  doubtful:  Nicara- 
gua offers  greater  advantages  to  the  English,  Tehuantepec  to 
the  American  traders.  The  Gulf  of  Panama,  and  the  ocean 
for  a  great  distance  to  the  westward  from  its  mouth,  are  no- 
torious for  their  freedom  from  all  breezes :  the  gulf  lies,  in- 
deed, in  the  equatorial  belt  of  calms,  and  sailing-vessels  can 
never  make  much  use  of  the  port  of  Panama.  Aspinwall  or 
Colon,  on  the  Atlantic  side,  has  no  true  port  whatever.  As 
long,  however,  as  the  question  is  merely  one  of  railroad  and 
steam-ship  traffic,  Panama  may  hold  its  own  against  the  other 
Isthmus  cities;  but  when  the  canal  is  cut,  the  selected  spot 
must  be  one  that  shall  be  beyond  the  reach  of  calms — in  Nic- 
aragua or  Mexico. 

From  Panama  I  sailed  in  one  of  the  ships  of  the  New  Co- 
lonial Line  for  Wellington,  in  New  Zealand — the  longest  steam- 
voyage  in  the  world.  Our  course  was  to  be  a  "  great  circle  " 
to  Pitcairn  Island,  and  another  great  circle  thence  to  Cape 
Palliser,  near  Wellington — a  distance  in  all  of  some  6600  miles, 
but  our  actual  course  was  nearer  7000.  When  off  the  Gala- 
pagos Islands,  we  met  the  cold  southerly  wind  and  water, 
known  as  the  Chilian  current,  and  crossed  the  equator  in  a 
breeze  which  forced  us  all  to  wear  great-coats,  and  to  dream 
that,  instead  of  entering  the  southern  hemisphere,  we  had 
come  by  mistake  within  the  arctic  circle. 


230  Greater  Britain. 

After  traversing  lonely  and  hitherto  unknown  seas,  and 
looking  in  vain  for  a  new  guano  island,  on  the  sixteenth  day 
we  worked  out  the  ship's  position  at  noon  with  more  than 
usual  care,  if  that  were  possible,  and  found  that  in  four  hours 
we  ought  to  be  at  Pitcairn  Island.  At  half-past  two  o'clock 
land  was  sighted  right  ahead,  and  by  four  o'clock  we  were  in 
the  bay,  such  as  it  is,  at  Pitcairn. 

Although  at  sea  there  was  a  calm,  the  surf  from  the 
ground-swell  beat  heavily  upon  the  shore,  and  we  were  fain  to 
content  ourselves  with  the  view  of  the  island  from  our  decks. 
It  consists  of  a  single  volcanic  peak,  hung  with  an  ai-ras  of 
green  creeping  plants,  passion-flowers,  and  trumpet-vines.  As 
for  the  people,  they  came  off  to  us  dancing  over  the  seas  in 
their  canoes,  and  bringing  us  green  oranges  and  bananas, 
while  a  huge  union-jack  was  run  up  on  their  flag-staff  by  those 
who  remained  on  shore. 

As  the  first  man  came  on  deck,  he  rushed  to  the  captain, 
and,  shaking  hands  violently,  cried,  in  pure  English,  entirely 
free  from  accent,  "  How  do  you  do,  captain  ?  How's  Vic- 
toria?" There  was  no  disrespect  in  the  omission  of  the  title 
"  Queen ;"  the  question  seemed  to  come  from  the  heart.  The 
bright-eyed  lads,  Adams  and  Young,  descendants  of  the  Boun- 
ty mutineers,  who  had  been  the  first  to  climb  our  sides,  an- 
nounced the  coming  of  Moses  Young,  the  "  magistrate  "  of  the 
isle,  who  presently  boarded  us  in  state.  He  was  a  grave  and 
gentlemanly  man,  English  in  appearance,  but  somewhat  slight- 
ly built,  as  were,  indeed,  the  lads.  The  magistrate  came 
off  to  lay  before  the  captain  the  facts  relating  to  a  feud 
which  exists  between  two  parties  of  the  islanders,  and  upon 
which  they  require  ai-bitration<  He  had  been  under  the  im- 
pression that  we  were  a  man-of-war,  as  we  had  fired  two  guns 
on  entering  the  bay  ;  and  being  received  by  our  officers,  who 
wore  the  cap  of  the  Naval  Reserve,  he  continued  in  the  belief 
till  the  captain  explained  what  the  "  Rakaia "  was,  and  why 
she  had  called  at  Pitcairn. 

The  case  which  the  captain  was  to  have  heard  judicially 
was  laid  before  us  for  our  advice  while  the  flues  of  the  ship 
were  being  cleaned.  When  the  British  Government  removed 
the  Pitcairn  Islanders  to  Norfolk  Island,  no  return  to  the  old 
home  was  contemplated  :  but  the  indolent  half-castes  found 


Pitcairn  Island.  231 

the  task  of  keeping  the  Norfolk  Island  convict-roads  in  good 
repair  one  heavier  than  they  cared  to  perform,  and  fifty-two 
of  them  have  lately  come  back  to  Pitcairn.  A  widow  who  re- 
turned with  the  others  claims  a  third  of  the  whole  island  as 
having  been  the  property  of  her  late  husband,  and  is  support- 
ed in  her  demand  by  half  the  islanders,  while  Moses  Young 
and  the  remainder  of  the  people  admit  the  facts,  but  assert 
that  the  desertion  of  the  island  was  complete,  and  oj^erated  as 
an  entire  abandonment  of  titles  which  the  reoccupation  can 
not  revive.  The  success  of  the  woman's  claim,  they  say, 
would  be  the  destruction  of  the  prosperity  of  Pitcairn. 

The  case  would  be  an  extremely  curious  one  if  it  had  to  be 
decided  upon  legal  grounds,  for  it  would  raise  complicated 
questions  both  on  the  nature  of  British  citizenship  and  the 
character  of  the  "  occupation "  title;  but  it  is  probable  that 
the  islanders  "will  abide  by  the  decision  of  the  Governor  of 
New  South  Wales,  to  which  colony  they  consider  themselves 
in  some  degree  attached. 

When  we  had  drawn  up  a  case  to  be  submitted  to  Sir  John 
Young,  our  captain  made  a  commercial  treaty  with  the  magis- 
trate, who  agreed  to  supply  the  ships  of  the  new  line,  when- 
ever daylight  allowed  them  to  call  at  Pitcairn,  with  oranges, 
bananas,  ducks,  and  fowls,  for  which  he  was  to  receive  cloth 
and  tobacco  in  exchange,  tobacco  being  the  money  of  the 
Polynesian  Archipelago.  Mr.  Young  told  us  that  his  people 
had  thirty  sheep,  which  were  owned  by  each  of  the  families 
in  turn,  the  household  taking  care  of  them  and  receiving  the 
profits  for  one  year.  Water,  he  said,  sometimes  falls  short  in 
the  island,  but  they  then  make  use  of  the  juice  of  the  green 
cocoa-nut.  Their  school  is  excellent ;  all  the  children  can  read 
and  write,  and  in  the  election  of  magistrates  they  have  female 
suffrage. 

When  we  went  on  deck  again  to  talk  to  the  younger  men, 
Adams  asked  us  a  new  question :  "  Have  you  a  Sunday  at 
Home  or  a  British  Workman  V  Our  books  and  papers  hav- 
ing been  ransacked,  Moses  Young  prepared  to  leave  the  ship, 
taking  with  him  presents  from  the  stores.  Besides  the  cloth, 
tobacco,  hats,  and  linen,  there  was  a  bottle  of  brandy — given 
for  medicine,  as  the  islanders  are  strict  teetotallers.  While 
Young  held  the  bottle  in  his  hand,  afraid  to  trust  the  lads 


232  Greater  Britain. 

with  it,  Adams  read  the  label  and  cried  out,  "  Brandy  ?  How 
much  for  a  dose  ?  .  .  .  .  Oh  yes !  all  right — I  know :  it's 
good  for  the  women?"  When  they  at  last  left  the  ship's 
side,  one  of  the  canoes  was  filled  with  a  crinoline  and  blue- 
silk  dress  for  Mrs.  Young,  and  another  with  a  red-and-brown 
tartan  for  Mrs.  Adams,  both  given  by  lady  passengers,  while 
the  lads  went  ashore  in  dust-coats  and  smoking-caps. 

Now  that  the  French,  with  their  singular  habit  of  every- 
where annexing  countries  which  other  colonizing  nations  have 
rejected,  are  rapidly  occupying  all  the  Polynesian  groups  ex- 
cept the  only  ones  that  are  of  value,  namely,  the  Sandwich 
Islands  and  New  Zealand,  Pitcairn  becomes  of  some  interest 
as  a  solitary  British  post  on  the  very  border  of  the  French 
dominions,  and  it  has  for  us  the  stronger  claim  to  notice,  which 
is  raised  by  the  fact  that  it  has  figured  for  the  last  few  years 
on  the  wrong  side  of  our  British  budget. 

As  we  stood  out  from  the  bay  into  the  lonely  seas,  the 
island  peak  showed  a  black  outline  against  a  pale-green  sky, 
but  in  the  west  the  heavy  clouds  that  in  the  Pacific  never 
fail  to  cumber  the  horizon  were  glowing  with  a  crimson  cast 
by  the  now-set  sun,  and  the  dancing  wavelets  were  tinted  with 
reflected  hues. 

The  "scarlet  shafts,"  which  poets  have  ascribed  to  the 
tropical  sunrise,  are  common  at  sunset  in  the  South  Pacific. 
Almost  every  night  the  reclining  sun,  sinking  behind  the 
clouds,  throws  rays  across  the  sky — not  yellow,  as  in  Europe 
and  America,  but  red  or  rosy  pink.  On  the  night  after  leav- 
ing Pitcairn,  I  saw  a  still  grander  effect  of  light  and  color. 
The  sun  had  set,  and  in  the  west  the  clear  greenish  sky  was 
hidden  by  pitch-black  thunder-clouds.  Through  these  were 
crimson  caves. 

On  the  twenty-ninth  day  of  our  voyage  we  sighted  the 
frowning  cliffs  of  Palliser,  where  the  bold  bluff,  coming  sheer 
down  three  thousand  feet,  receives  the  full  shock  of  the  South 
Seas  —  a  fitting  introduction  to  the  grand  scenery  of  New 
Zealand;  and  within  a  few  hours  we  were  running  up  the 
great  sea-lake  of  Port  Nicholson  toward  long  lines  of  steam- 
ers at  a  wharf,  behind  which  were  the  cottages  of  Wellington, 
the  capital. 

To   me,  coming  from   San   Francisco   and  the  Nevadan 


IIOKITIKA.  233 

towns,  Wellington  appeared  very  English,  and  extremely- 
quiet  ;  the  town  is  sunny  and  still,  but  with  a  holiday  look ; 
indeed,  I  could  not  help  fancying  that  it  was  Sunday.  A  cer- 
tain haziness  as  to  what  was  the  day  of  the  week  prevailed 
among  the  passengers  and  crew,  for  we  had  arrived  upon  our 
Wednesday,  the  New  Zealand  Thursday,  and  so,  without  los- 
ing an  hour,  lost  a  day,  which,  unless  by  going  round  the 
world  the  other  way,  can  never  be  regained.  The  bright 
colors  of  the  painted  wooden  houses,  the  clear  air,  the  rose- 
beds,  and  the  emerald-green  grass,  are  the  true  cause  of  the 
holiday  look  of  the  New  Zealand  towns,  and  Wellington  is 
the  gayest  of  them  all ;  for,  owing  to  the  frequency  of  earth- 
quakes, the  towns-folk  are  not  allowed  to  build  in  brick  or 
stone.  The  natives  say  that  once  in  every  month  "  Ruaimoko 
turns  himself,"  and  sad  things  follow  to  the  shaken  earth. 

It  was  now  November,  the  New  Zealand  spring,  and  the 
outskirts  of  Wellington  were  gay  with  the  cherry-trees  in 
full  fruiting  and  English  dog-roses  in  full  bloom,  while  on 
every  road-side  bank  the  gorse  blazed  in  its  coat  of  yellow : 
there  was,  too,  to  me,  a  singular  charm  in  the  bright  green 
turf,  after  the  tawny  grass  of  California. 

Without  making  a  long  halt,  I  started  for  the  South  Island, 
first  steaming  across  Cook's  Straits,  and  up  Queen  Charlotte 
Sound  to  Picton,  and  then  through  the  French  Pass — a  narrow 
passage  filled  with  fearful  whirlpools — to  Nelson,  a  gem-like 
little  Cornish  village.  After  a  day's  "cattle-branding"  with 
an  old  college  friend  at  his  farm  in  the  valley  of  the  Maitai,  I 
sailed  again  for  the  south,  laying  for  a  night  in  Massacre  Bay 
to  avoid  the  worst  of  a  tremendous  gale,  and  then  coasting 
down  to  the  Buller  and  Hokitika — the  new  gold-fields  of  the 
colonies. 


CHAPTER  II. 

IIOKITIKA. 


Placed  in  the  very  track  of  storms,  and  opened  to  the 
sweep  of  rolling  seas  from  every  quarter,  exposed  to  waves 
that  run  from  pole  to  pole,  or  from  South  Africa  to.  Cape 
Horn,  the  shores  of  New  Zealand  are  famed  for  swell  and 


IIOKITIKA.  285 

surf,  and  her  western  rivers  for  the  danger  of  their  bars.  In- 
surances at  Melbourne  are  five  times  as  high  for  the  voyage 
to  Hokitika  as  for  the  longer  cruise  to  Brisbane. 

In  our  little  steamer  of  a  hundred  tons,  built  to  cross  the 
bars,  we  had  reached  the  mouth  of  the  Hokitika  River  soon 
after  dark,  but  lay  all  night  some  ten  miles  to  the  south-west 
of  the  port.  As  we  steamed  in  the  early  morning  from  our 
anchorage,  there  rose  up  on  the  east  the  finest  sunrise  view 
on  which  it  has  been  my  fortune  to  set  eyes. 

A  hundred  miles  of  the  Southern  Alps  stood  out  upon  a 
pale-blue  sky  in  curves  of  a  gloomy  white  that  were  just  be- 
ginning to  blush  with  pink,  but  ended  to  the  southward  in  a 
cone  of  fire  that  stood  up  from  the  ocean :  it  was  the  snow- 
dome  of  Mount  Cook  struck  by  the  l-ising  sun.  The  ever- 
green bush,  flaming  with  the  crimson  of  the  rata-blooms, 
hung  upon  the  mountain-side,  and  covered  the  plain  to  the 
very  margin  of  the  narrow  sands  with  a  dense  jungle.  It 
was  one  of  those  sights  that  haunt  men  for  years,  like  the 
eyes  of  Mary  in  Bellini's  Milan  picture. 

On  the  bar,  three  ranks  of  waves  appeared  to  stand  fixed 
in  walls  of  surf.  These  huge  rollers  are  sad  destroyers  of  the 
New  Zealand  coasting-ships :  a  steamer  was  lost  here  a  week 
before  my  visit,  and  the  harboi'-master's  whale-boat  dashed  in 
pieces,  and  two  men  drowned. 

Lashing  every  thing  that  was  on  deck,  and  battening  down 
the  hatches  in  case  we  should  ground  in  crossing,  we  prepared 
to  run  the  gauntlet.  The  steamers  often  ground  for  an  in- 
stant while  in  the  trough  between  the  waves,  and  the  second 
sea  sweeps  them  from  stem  to  stern,  but  carries  them  into  the 
still  water.  Watching  our  time,  we  were  borne  on  a  great, 
rolling,  white-capped  wave  into  the  quiet  lakelet  that  forms 
the  harbor,  just  as  the  sun,  coming  slowly  up  behind  the  range, 
was  firing  the  Alps  from  north  to  south;  but  it  was  not  till 
we  had  lain  some  minutes  at  the  wharf  that  the  sun  rose  to  \is 
poor  mortals  of  the  sea  and  plain.  Hokitika  Bay  is  strangely 
like  the  lower  portion  of  the  Lago  Maggiore,  but  Mount  Rosa 
is  inferior  to  Mount  Cook. 

As  I  walked  up  from  the  quay  to  the  town,  looking  for  the 
"  Empire  "  Hotel,  which  I  had  heard  was  the  best  in  Hokitika, 
I  spied  a  boy  carrying  a  bundle  of  some  newspaper.     It  was 


236  Greater  Britain. 

the  early  edition  for  the  up-country  coaches,  but  I  asked  if  he 
could  spare  me  a  copy.  He  put  one  into  my  hand.  "How 
much?"  I  asked.  "A  snapper."  "A  snapper?"  "Ay — a 
tizzy."  Understanding  this  more  familiar  term,  I  gave  him  n 
shilling.  Instead  of  "  change,"  he  cocked  up  his  knee,  slapped 
the  shilling  down  on  it,  and  said  "  Cry  !"  I  accordingly  cried 
"  Woman  !"  and  won,  he  loyally  returning  the  coin,  and  walk- 
ing off  minus  a  paper. 

When  I  reached  that  particular  gin-palace  which  was  known 
as  the  hotel,  I  found  that  all  the  rooms  were  occupied,  but 
that  I  could,  if  I  pleased,  lie  down  on  a  deal  side-table  in  the 
billiard-room.  In  our  voyage  down  the  coast  from  Nelson, 
we  had  brought  for  the  Bailer  and  for  Hokitika  a  cabin  full 
of  cut  flowers  for  bouquets,  of  which  the  diggers  are  extremely 
fond.  The  fact  was  pretty  enough :  the  store  set  upon  a  sin- 
gle rose — "an  English  rose-bud" — culled  from  a  plant  that 
had  been  brought  from  the  Old  Country  in  a  clipper-ship,  was 
still  more  touching,  but  the  flowers  made  sleep  below  impos- 
sible, and  it  had  been  blowing  too  hard  for  me  to  sleep  on 
deck,  so  that  I  was  glad  to  lie  down  upon  my  table  for  an 
hour's  rest.  The  boards  were  rough  and  full  of  cracks,  and 
I  began  to  dream  that,  walking  on  the  landing-stage,  I  ran 
against  a  man,  who  drew  his  revolver  upon  me.  In  wrench- 
ing it  from  him,  I  hurt  my  hand  in  the  lock,  and  woke  to  find 
my  fingers  pinched  in  one  of  the  chinks  of  the  long  table. 
Despairing  of  further  sleep,  I  started  to  walk  through  Hoki- 
tika, and  to  explore  the  "  clearings "  which  the  settlers  are 
making  in  the  bush. 

At  Pakihi  and  the  Buller  I  had  already  seen  the  places  to 
which  the  latest  gold-digging  "  rush  "  had  taken  place,  with 
the  result  of  planting  there  some  thousands  of  men  with  noth- 
ing to  eat  but  gold — for  diggers,  however  shrewd,  fall  always 
an  easy  prey  to  those  who  tell  them  of  spots  where  gold  may 
be  had  for  the  digging,  and  never  stop  to  think  how  they  shall 
live.  No  attempt  is  at  present  made  to  grow  even  vegetables 
for  the  diggers'  food  :  every  one  is  engi'ossed  in  the  search 
for  gold.  It  is  true  that  the  dense  jungle  is  being  driven 
back  from  the  diggers'  camps  by  fire  and  sword,  but  the  clear- 
ing is  only  made  to  give  room  for  tents  and  houses.  At  the 
Buller  I  had  found  the  forest,  which  comes  down  at  present 


IIOKITIKA.  237 

to  the  water's  edge,  and  crowds  upon  the  twenty  shanties  and 
hundred  tents  and  boweries  which  form  the  town,  smoking 
with  fires  on  every  side,  and  the  parrots  chattering  with 
fright.  The  fires  obstinately  refused  to  spread,  but  the  tall 
feathery  trees  were  falling  fast  under  the  axes  of  some  hun- 
dred diggers,  who  seemed  not  to  have  much  romantic  sympa- 
thy for  the  sufferings  of  the  tree-ferns  they  had  uprooted,  or 
of  the  passion-flowers  they  were  tearing  from  the  evergreens 
they  had  embraced. 

The  soil  about  the  Fox,  the  Buller,  the  Okitiki,  and  the 
other  west-coast  rivers  on  which  gold  is  found,  is  a  black  leaf- 
mould  of  extraordinary  depth  and  richness  ;  but  in  New  Zea- 
land, as  in  America,  the  poor  lands  are  first  occupied  by  the 
settlers,  because  the  fat  soils  will  pay  for  the  clearing  only 
when  there  is  already  a  considerable  population  on  the  land. 
On  this  west  coast  it  rains  nearly  all  the  year,  and  vegetation 
has  such  power  that  "  rainy  Hokitika  "  must  long  continue  to 
be  fed  from  Christchurch  and  from  Nelson,  for  it  is  as  hard 
to  keep  the  land  clear  as  it  is  at  the  first  to  clear  it. 

The  profits  realized  upon  ventures  from  Nelson  to  the  Gold 
Coast  are  enormous  ;  nothing  less  than  fifty  per  cent,  will 
compensate  the  owners  for  losses  on  the  bars.  The  first  cat- 
tle imported  from  Nelson  to  the  Buller  fetched  at  the  latter 
place  double  the  price  they  had  cost  only  two  days  earlier.  One 
result  of  this  maritime  usury  that  was  told  me  by  the  steward 
of  the  steamer  in  which  I  came  down  from  Nelson  is  worth  re- 
cording for  the  benefit  of  the  economists.  They  had  on  board, 
he  said,  a  stock  of  spirits  sufficient  for  several  trips,  but  they 
altered  their  prices  according  to  locality ;  from  Nelson  to  the 
Buller  they  charged  6(7.  a  drink,  but,  once  in  the  river,  the 
price  rose  to  Is.,  at  which  it  remained  until  the  ship  left  port 
upon  her  return  to  Nelson,  when  it  fell  again  to  Qd.  A  drover 
coming  down  in  charge  of  cattle  was  a  great  friend  of  this 
steward,  and  the  latter  confirmed  the  story  which  he  had  told 
me  by  waking  the  drover  when  we  were  off  the  Buller  bar  : 
"  Say,  mister,  if  you  want  a  drink,  you'd  better  take  it.  It'll 
be  shilling  drinks  in  five  minutes." 

The  Hokitikans  flatter  themselves  that  their  city  is  the 
"  most  rising  place  "  on  earth,  and  it  must  be  confessed  that 
if  population  alone  is  to  be  regarded,  the  rapidity  of  its  growth 


2oS  Greater  Britain. 

has  been  amazing.  At  the  time  of  my  visit,  one  year  and  a 
half  had  passed  since  the  settlement  was  formed  by  a  few  dig- 
gers,  and  it  already  had  a  permanent  population  of  ten  thou- 
sand, while  no  less  than  sixty  thousand  diggers  and  their 
friends  claimed  it  for  their  head-quarters.  San  Francisco  it- 
self did  not  rise  so  fast,  Melbourne  not  much  faster  ;  but  Hoki- 
tika,  it  must  be  remembered,  is  not  only  a  gold-field  port,  but 
itself  upon  the  gold-field.  It  is  San  Francisco  and  Placerville 
in  one — Ballarat  and  Melbourne. 

Inferior  in  its  banks  and  theatres  to  Virginia  City,  or  even 
Austin,  there  is  one  point  in  which  Hokitika  surpasses  every 
American  mining-town  that  I  have  seen — the  goodness,  name- 
ly, of  its  roads.  Working  upon  them  in  the  bright  morning 
sun  which  this  day  graced  "  rainy  Hokitika  "  with  its  presence, 
were  a  gang  of  diggers  and  sailors,  dressed  in  the  clothes 
which  every  one  must  wear  in  a  digging-town  unless  he  wish- 
es to  be  stared  at  by  every  passer-by.  Even  sailors  on  shore 
"for  a  run"  here  wear  cord  breeches  and  high,  tight-fitting 
boots,  often  armed  with  spurs,  though,  as  there  are  no  horses 
except  those  of  the  Gold-coast  Police,  they  can  not  enjoy  much 
riding.  The  gang  working  on  the  roads  were  like  the  people 
I  met  about  the  town — rough,  but  not  ill-looking  fellows.  To 
my  astonishment  I  saw,  conspicuous  among  their  red  shirts 
and  "  jumpers,"  the  blue-and-white  uniform  of  the  mounted 
police  :  and,  from  the  way  in  which  the  constables  handled 
their  loaded  rifles,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  road- 
menders  must  be  a  gang  of  prisoners.  On  inquiry,  I  found 
that  all  the  New  Zealand  "  convicts,"  including  under  this 
sweeping  title  men  convicted  for  mere  petty  offenses,  and  sen- 
tenced to  hard  labor  for  a  month,  are  made  to  do  good  prac- 
tical work  upon  the  roads :  so  much  resistance  to  the  police, 
so  much  new  road  made  or  old  road  mended.  I  was  reminded 
of  the  Missourian  practice  of  setting  prisoners  to  dig  out  the 
stumps  that  cumbered  the  streets  of  the  younger  towns  :  the 
sentence  on  a  man  for  being  drunk  is  said  to  be  that  he  pull 
up  a  black-walnut  stump  ;  drunk  and  disorderly,  a  large  buck- 
eye ;  assaulting  the  sheriff,  a  tough  old  hickory  root,  and  so  on. 

The  hair  and  beard  of  the  short-sentence  "convicts"  in 
New  Zealand  is  never  cut,  and  there  is  nothing  hang-dog  in 
their  looks ;  but  their  faces  are  often  bright,  and  even  happy. 


IIOKITIKA.  239 

Those  cheerful  prisoners  are  for  the  most  part  "  runners  " — 
sailors  who  have  broken  their  agreements  in  order  to  get  upon 
the  diggings,  and  who  bear  their  punishment  philosophically, 
with  the  hope  of  future  "  finds  "  before  them. 

"When  the  great  rush  to  Melbourne  occurred  in  1848,  ships 
by  the  hundred  were  left  in  the  Yarra  without  a  single  hand 
to  navigate  them.  Nuggets  in  the  hand  would  not  tempt 
sailors  away  from  the  hunt  after  the  nuggets  in  the  bush. 
Ships  left  Hobson's  Bay  for  Chili  with  half  a  dozen  hands  ; 
and  in  one  case  that  came  within  my  knowledge,  a  captain, 
his  mate,  and  tlu-ee  Maories  took  a  brig  across  the  Pacific  to 
San  Francisco. 

As  the  morning  wore  on,  I  came  near  seeing  something  of 
more  serious  crime  than  that  for  which  these  "  runners  "  were 
convicted.  "  Sticking-up,"  as  highway  robbery  is  called  in 
the  colonies,  has  always  been  common  in  Australia  and  New 
Zealand,  but  of  late  the  bush-rangers,  deserting  their  old  tac- 
tics, have  commenced  to  murder  as  well  as  rob.  In  three 
months  of  18GG  no  less  than  fifty  or  sixty  murders  took  place 
in  the  South  Island  of  New  Zealand,  all  of  them  committed, 
it  was  believed,  by  a  gang  known  as  "  The  Thugs."  Mr. 
George  Dobson,  the  Government  surveyor,  was  murdered  near 
Ilokitika  in  May,  but  it  was  not  till  November  that  the  gang 
was  broken  up  by  the  police  and  volunteers.  Levy,  Kelly,  and 
Burgess,  three  of  the  most  notorious  of  the  villains,  were  on 
their  trial  at  Ilokitika  while  I  was  there,  and  Sullivan,  also  a 
member  of  the  band,  who  had  been  taken  at  Nelson,  had  vol- 
unteered to  give  evidence  against  them.  Sullivan  was  to 
come  by  steamer  from  the  North  without  touching  at  the 
Buller  or  the  Gray  ;  and,  when  the  ship  was  signalled,  the  ex- 
citement of  the  population  became  considerable,  the  diggers 
asserting  that  Sullivan  was  not  only  the  basest,  but  the  most 
guilty  of  all  the  gang.  As  the  vessel  ran  across  the  bar  and 
into  the  bay,  the  police  were  marched  down  to  the  landing- 
place,  and  a  yelling  crowd  surrounded  them,  threatening  to 
lynch  the  informer.  When  the  steamer  came  alongside  the 
wharf  Sullivan  was  not  to  be  seen,  and  it  was  soon  discovered 
that  he  had  been  landed  in  a  whale-boat  upon  the  outer  beach. 
Off  rushed  the  crowd,  to  intercept  the  party  in  the  town,  but 
they  found  the  jail-gates  already  shut  and  barred. 


240  Greater  Britain. 

It  was  hard  to  say  whether  it  was  for  Thuggism  or  for 
turning  queen's  evidence,  that  Sullivan  was  to  he  lynched  : 
crime  is  looked  at  here  as  leniently  as  it  is  in  Texas.  I  once 
met  a  man  who  had  heen  a  coroner  at  one  of  the  digging- 
towns,  who,  talking  of  "  old  times,"  said,  quietly  enough,  "  Oh 
yes,  plenty  of  work ;  we  used  to  make  a  good  deal  of  it. 
You  see,  I  was  paid  by  fees,  so  I  used  generally  to  manage  to 
hold  four  or  five  inquests  on  each  body.  Awful  rogues  my 
assistants  were ;  I  shouldn't  like  to  have  some  of  those  men's 
sins  to  answer  for." 

The  Gold-coast  Police  Force,  which  has  been  formed  to 
put  a  stop  to  Thuggism  and  bush-ranging,  is  a  splendid  body 
of  cavalry,  about  which  many  good  stories  are  told.  One  dig- 
ger said  to  me,  "  Seen  our  policemen  ?  We  don't  have  no 
yiyanger  sons  of  British  peers  among  'em."  Another  account 
says  that  none  but  members  of  the  older  English  universities 
are  admitted  to  the  force. 

There  are  here  upon  the  diggings  many  military  men  and 
University  graduates,  who  generally  retain  their  polish  of 
manner,  though  outwardly  they  are  often  the  roughest  of 
the  rough.  Some  of  them  tell  strange  stories.  One  Cam- 
bridge man,  who  was  acting  as  a  Post-office  clerk  (not  at  Ho- 
kitika),  told  me  that  in  1862,  shortly  after  taking  his  degree, 
he  went  out  to  British  Columbia  to  settle  upon  land.  He 
soon  spent  his  capital  at  billiards  in  Victoria  City,  and  went 
as  a  digger  to  the  Frazer  River.  There  he  made  a  "  pile," 
which  he  gambled  away  on  his  road  back,  and  he  struggled 
through  the  winter  of  18G3-4  by  shooting  and  selling  game. 
In  1 864  he  was  attached  as  a  hunter  to  the  Vancouver's  Ex- 
ploring Expedition,  and  in  1865  started  with  a  small  sum  of 
money  for  Australia.  He  was  wrecked,  lost  all  he  had,  and 
was  forced  to  work  his  passage  down  to  Melbourne.  From 
there  he  went  into  South  Australia  as  the  driver  of  a  reaping- 
machine,  and  Avas  finally,  through  the  efforts  of  his  friends  in 
England,  appointed  to  a  Post-office  clerkship  in  New  Zealand, 
which  colony  he  intended  to  quit  for  California  or  Chili. 
This  was  not  the  only  man  of  education  whom  I  myself  found 
upon  the  diggings,  as  I  met  with  a  Christchurch  man,  who, 
however,  had  left  Oxford  without  a  degree,  actually  working 
as  a  digger  in  a  surface  mine. 


IIOKITIKA.  2-il 

In  the  outskirts  of  Hokitika  I  came  upon  a  palpable  Life- 
gaardsiman,  cooking  for  a  roadside  station,  with  his  smock 
worn  like  a  soldier's  tunic,  and  his  cap  stuck  on  one  ear  in 
Windsor  fashion.  A  "squatter"  from  near  Christchurch, 
who  was  at  the  Buller  selling  sheep,  told  me  that  he  had  an 
ex-captain  in  the  Guards  at  work  for  weekly  wages  on  his 
"  sheep-run,"  and  that  a  neighbor  had  a  lieutenant  of  Lancers 
rail-splitting  at  his  "  station." 

Neither  the  habits  nor  the  morals  of  this  strange  commu- 
nity are  of  the  best.  You  never  see  a  drunken  man,  but  drink- 
ing is  apparently  the  chief  occupation  of  that  portion  of  the 
town  population  which  is  not  actually  employed  in  digging. 
The  mail-coaches  which  run  across  the  island  on  the  great  new 
road,  and  along  the  sands  to  the  other  mining  settlements, 
have  singularly  short  stages,  made  so,  it  would  seem,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  keepers  of  the  "  saloons,"  for  at  eveiy  halt  one 
or  other  of  the  passengers  is  expected  to  "  shout,"  or  "  stand," 
as  it  would  be  called  at  home,  "  drinks  all  round."  "  What'll 
yer  shout  ?"  is  the  only  question ;  and  want  of  coined  money 
need  be  no  hindcrance,  for  "  gold-dust  is  taken  at  the  bar." 
One  of  the  favorite  amusements  of  the  diggers  at  Pakihi,  on 
the  days  when  the  store-schooner  arrives  from  Nelson,  is  to  fill 
a  bucket  with  champagne  and  drink  till  they  feel  "  comforta- 
ble." This  done,  they  seat  themselves  in  the  road,  with  their 
feet  on  the  window-sill  of  the  shanty,  and,  calling  to  the  first 
passer,  ask  him  to  drink  from  the  bucket.  If  he  consents — 
good;  if  not,  up  they  jump,  and  duck  his  head  in  the  wine, 
which  remains  for  the  next  comer. 

When  I  left  Hokitika,  it  was  by  the  new  road,  1 70  miles  in 
length,  which  crosses  the  Alps  and  the  island,  and  connects 
Christchurch,  the  capital  of  Canterbury,  with  the  western 
parts  of  the  province.  The  bush  between  the  sea  and  mount- 
ains is  extremely  lovely.  The  highway  is  "corduroyed" 
Avith  trunks  of  the  tree-fern,  and  in  the  swamps  the  sleepers 
have  commenced  to  grow  at  each  end,  so  that  a  close-set  double 
row  of  young  tree-ferns  is  rising  along  portions  of  the  road. 
The  bush  is  densely  matted  with  an  undergrowth  of  supple- 
jack and  all  kinds  of  creepers,  but  here  and  there  one  finds  a 
grove  of  tree-ferns  twenty  feet  in  height,  and  grown  so  thickly 
as  to  prevent  the  existence  of  underwood  and  ground-plants. 

L 


242  Greater  Britain. 

The  peculiarity  which  makes  the  New  Zealand  west-coast 
scenery  the  most  beautiful  in  the  world  to  those  who  like  more 
green  than  California  has  to  show,  is  that  here  alone  can  you 
iind  semi-tropical  vegetation  growing  close  up  to  the  eternal 
snows.  The  latitude  and  the  great  moisture  of  the  climate 
bring  the  long  glaciers  very  low  into  the  valleys ;  and  the  ab- 
sence of  all  true  winter,  coupled  with  the  rain-fall,  causes  the 
growth  of  palm-like  ferns  upon  the  ice-river's  very  edge.  The 
glaciers  of  Mount  Cook  are  the  longest  in  the  world,  except 
those  at  the  sources  of  the  Indus,  but  close  about  them  have 
been  found  tree-ferns  of  thirty  and  forty  feet  in  height.  It  is 
not  till  you  enter  the  mountains  that  you  escape  the  moisture 
of  the  coast,  and  quit  for  the  scenery  of  the  Alps  the  scenery 
of  fairy-land. 

Bumping  and  tumbling  in  the  mail-cart  through  the  rushing 
blue-gray  waters  of  the  Taramakao,  I  found  myself  within  the 
mountains  of  the  Snowy  range.  In  the  Otira  Gorge,  also 
known  as  Arthur's  Pass — from  Arthur  Dobson,  brother  to  the 
surveyor  murdered  by  the  Thugs — six  small  glaciers  were  in 
sight  at  once.  The  Rocky  Mountains  opposite  to  Denver  are 
loftier,  and  not  less  snowy  than  the  New  Zealand  Alps,  but  in 
the  Rockies  there  are  no  glaciers  south  of  about  50°  N. ;  while 
in  New  Zealand — a  winterless  country — they  are  common  at 
eight  degrees  nearer  to  the  line.  The  varying  amount  of 
moisture  has  doubtless  caused  this  difference. 

As  we  journeyed  through  the  pass,  there  was  one  grand 
view — and  only  one :  the  glimpse  of  the  ravine  to  the  eastward 
of  Mount  Rollestone,  caught  from  the  desert  shore  of  Lake 
Misery — a  tarn  near  the  "  divide  "  of  waters.  About  its  banks 
there  groAvs  a  plant,  unknown,  they  say,  except  at  this  lonely 
spot — the  Rockwood  lily — a  bushy  plant,  with  a  round,  polish- 
ed, concave  leaf,  and  a  cup-shaped  flower  of  virgin  white  that 
seems  to  take  its  tint  from  the  encircling  snows. 

In  the  evening  we  had  a  view  that  for  gloomy  grandeur 
can  not  well  be  matched — that  from  near  Bealey  township, 
where  we  struck  the  Waimakiriri  Valley.  The  river-bed  is 
half  a  mile  in  width,  the  stream  itself  not  more  than  ten  yards 
across,  but,  like  all  New  Zealand  rivers,  subject  to  freshets, 
which  fill  its  bed  to  a  great  depth  with  a  surging,  foaming 
Hood.     Some  of  the  victims  of  the  Waimakiriri  are  buried 


II O  K I T I  K  A .  243 

alongside  the  road.  Dark  evergreen  bush  shuts  in  the  river- 
bed, and  is  topped  on  the  one  side  by  dreary  frozen  peaks,  and 
on  the  other  by  still  gloomier  mountains  of  bare  rock. 

Our  road  next  morning  from  the  Cass,  where  we  had  spent 
the  night,  lay  through  the  eastern  foot-hills  and  down  to  Can- 
terbury Plains  by  way  of  Porter's  Pass — a  narrow  track  on 
the  top  of  a  tremendous  precipice,  but  soon  to  be  changed  for 
a  road  cut  along  its  face.  The  plains  are  one  great  sheep-run, 
open,  almost  flat,  and  upon  which  you  lose  all  sense  of  size. 
At  the  mountain-foot  they  are  covered  with  tall,  coarse,  native 
grass,  and  are  dry,  like  the  Kansas  prairie ;  about  Christchurcb, 
the  English  clover  and  English  grasses  have  usurped  the  soil, 
and  all  is  fresh  and  green. 

New  Zealand  is  at  present  divided  into  nine  semi-independ- 
ent provinces,  of  which  three  are  large  and  powerful,  and  the 
remainder  comparatively  small  and  poor.  Six  of  the  nine  are 
true  States,  having  each  its  history  as  an  independent  settle- 
ment; the  remaining  three  are  creations  of  the  Federal  Gov- 
ernment or  of  the  Crown. 

These  are  not  the  only  difficulties  in  the  way  of  New  Zea- 
land statesmen,  for  the  provinces  themselves  are  far  from  be- 
ing homogeneous  units.  Two  of  the  wealthiest  of  all  the 
States,  which  were  settled  as  colonies  with  a  religious  tinge — 
Otago,  Presbyterian  ;  and  Canterbury,  Episcopalian  —  have 
been  blessed  or  cursed  with  the  presence  of  a  vast  horde  of 
diggers,  of  no  particular  religion,  and  free  from  any  reverence 
for  things  established.  Canterbury  province  is  not  only  polit- 
ically divided  against  itself,  but  geographically  split  in  twain 
by  the  Snow  range,  and  the  diggers  hold  the  west-coast  bush, 
the  old  settlers  the  east-coast  plain.  East  and  west,  each  cries 
out  that  the  other  side  is  robbing  it.  The  Christchurch  people 
say  that  their  money  is  being  spent  on  Westland,  and  the 
Westland  diggers  cry  out  against  the  foppery  and  aristocratic 
pretense  of  Christchurch.  A  division  of  the  province  seems 
inevitable,  unless,  indeed,  the  "  Centralists  "  gain  the  day,  and 
bring  about  either  a  closer  union  of  the  whole  of  the  provinces, 
coupled  with  a  grant  of  local  self-government  to  their  subdi- 
visions, or  else  the  entire  destruction  of  the  provincial  system. 

The  division  into  provinces  was  at  one  time  necessary,  from 
the  fact  that  the   settlements  were  historically  distinct,  and 


211  Greater  Britain. 

physically  cut  off  from  each  other  by  the  impenetrability  of 
the  bush  and  the  absence  of  all  roads ;  biit  the  barriers  are  now 
surmounted,  and  no  sufficient  reason  can  be  found  for  keeping 
up  ten  Cabinets  and  ten  Legislatures  for  a  population  of  only 
200,000  souls.  Such  is  the  costliness  of  the  provincial  system 
and  of  Maori  wars,  that  the  taxation  of  the  New  Zealanders  is 
nine  times  as  heavy  as  that  of  their  brother-colonists  in  Can- 
ada. 

It  is  not  probable  that  so  costly  and  so  inefficient  a  system 
of  government  as  that  which  now  obtains  in  New  Zealand  can 
long  continue  to  exist.  It  is  not  only  dear  and  bad,  but  dan- 
gerous in  addition ;  and  during  my  visit  to  Port  Chalmers,  the 
province  of  Otago  was  loudly  threatening  secession.  Like  all 
other  federal  constitutions,  that  of  New  Zealand  fails  to  pro- 
vide a  sufficiently  strong  central  power  to  meet  a  divergence 
of  interests  between  the  several  States.  The  system  which 
failed  in  Greece,  which  failed  in  Germany,  which  failed  in 
America,  has  failed  here  in  the  antipodes  ;  and  it  may  be  said 
that,  in  these  days  of  improved  communications,  wherever  fed- 
eration is  possible,  a  still  closer  union  is  at  least  as  likely  to 
prove  lasting. 

New  Zealand  suffers,  not  only  by  the  artificial  division  into 
provinces,  but  also  by  the  physical  division  of  the  country  into 
two  great  islands,  too  far  apar.t  to  be  ever  thoroughly  homo- 
geneous, too  near  together  to  be  wholly  independent  of  each 
other.  The  difficulty  has  been  hitherto  increased  by  the  ex- 
istence in  the  North  Island  of  a  powerful  and  warlike  native 
race  all  but  extinct  in  the  South  Island.  Not  only  have  the 
Southern  people  no  native  wars,  but  they  have  no  native  claim- 
ants from  whom  every  acre  for  the  settler  must  be  bought, 
and  they  naturally  decline  to  submit  to  ruinous  taxation  to 
purchase  Parewanui  from,  or  to  defend  Taranaki  against,  the 
Maories.  Having  been  thwarted  by  the  Home  Government  in 
the  agitation  for  the  "  separation  "  of  the  islands,  the  Southern 
people  now  aim  at  "  ultra-provincialism,"  declaring  for  a  sys- 
tem under  which  the  provinces  would  virtually  be  independ- 
ent colonies,  connected  only  by  a  confederation  of  the  loosest 
kind. 

The  jealousies  of  the  great  towns,  here  as  in  Italy,  have 
much  bearing  upon  the  political  situation.     Auckland  is  for 


Hokitika.  245 

separation,  because  in  that  event  it  would  of  necessity  become 
the  seat  of  the  government  of  the  North  Island.  In  the 
South,  Christchurch  and  Dunedin  have  similar  claims  ;  and 
each  of  them,  ignoring  the  other,  begs  for  separation  in  the 
hope  of  becoming  the  Southern  capital.  Wellington  and 
Kelson  alone  are  for  the  continuance  of  the  federation — Wel- 
lington because  it  is  already  the  capital,  and  Nelson  because 
it  is  intriguing  to  supplant  its  neighbor.  Although  the  diffi- 
culties of  the  moment  mainly  arise  out  of  the  war  expenditure, 
and  will  terminate  with  the  extinction  of  the  Maori  race,  her 
geographical  shape  almost  forbids  us  to  hope  that  New  Zea- 
land will  ever  form  a  single  country  under  a  strong  central 
government. 

To  obtain  an  adequate  idea  of  the  difficulty  of  his  task,  a 
new  governor,  on  landing  in  New  Zealand,  could  not  do  bet- 
ter than. cross  the  Southern  Island.  On  the  west  side  of  the 
mountains  he  would  find  a  restless  digger  •democracy,  likely 
to  be  succeeded  in  the  future  by  small  manufacturers,  and 
spade-farmers  growing  root-crops  upon  small  holdings  of  fer- 
tile loam  ;  on  the  east,  gentlemen  sheep-farmers,  holding  their 
twenty  thousand  acres  each — supporters  by  their  position  of 
the  existing  state  of  things,  or  of  an  aristocratic  republic,  in 
which  men  of  their  own  caste  would  rule. 

Christchurch — Episcopalian,  dignified — the  first  settlement 
in  the  province,  and  still  the  capital,  affects  to  despise  Hoki- 
tika, already  more  wealthy  and  more  populous.  Christchurch 
imports  English  rooks  to  caw  in  the  elm-trees  of  her  cathedral 
close;  Hokitika  imports  men.  Christchurch  has  not  fallen 
away  from  her  traditions  :  every  street  is  named  from  an  En- 
glish bishopric,  and  the  society  is  that  of  an  English  country 
town. 

Returning  northward  along  the  coast,  in  the  shade  of  the 
cold  and  gloomy  mountains  of  the  Kaikoura  range,  I  found  at 
Wellington  two  invitations  awaiting  me  to  be  present  at  great 
gatherings  of  the  native  tribes. 

The  next  day  I  started  for  the  Manawatu  River  and  Pare* 
wanui  Pah. 


246  Greater  Britain. 


CHAPTER  III. 

rOLYNESHNS, 

The  name  "  Maori "  is  said  to  mean  "  native,"  but  the 
boast  on  the  part  of  the  Maori  race  contained  in  the  title 
"  Natives  of  the  Soil "  is  one  which  conflicts  with  their  tra- 
ditions. These  make  them  out  to  be  mere  interlopers — Ta- 
hitians,  they  themselves  say — who,  within  historic  ages,  sail- 
ed down,  island  by  island,  in  their  war-canoes,  massacring  the 
inhabitants,  and,  finally  landing  in  New  Zealand,  found  a  nu- 
merous horde  of  blacks  of  the  Australian  race  living  in  the 
forests  of  the  South  Island.  Favored  by  a  year  of  exception- 
al drought,  they  set  fire  to  the  forests,  and  burned  to  the  last 
man,  or  drove  into  the  sea,  the  aboriginal  possessors  of  the 
soil.  Some  ethnologists  believe  that  this  account  is  in  the 
main  correct,  but  hold  that  the  Maori  race  is  Malay,  and  not 
originally  Tahitian :  others  have  tried  to  show  that  the  con- 
flict between  blacks  and  browns  was  not  confined  to  these  two 
islands,  but  raged  throughout  the  whole  of  Polynesia ;  and 
that  it  was  terminated  in  New  Zealand  itself,  not  by  the  de- 
struction of  the  blacks,  but  by  the  amalgamation  of  the  op- 
posing races. 

The  legends  allege  war  as  the  cause  for  the  flight  to  New 
Zealand.  The  accounts  of  some  of  the  migrations  are  cir- 
cumstantial in  the  extreme,  and  describe  the  first  planting  of 
the  yams,  the  astonishment  of  the  people  at  the  new  flowers 
and  trees  of  the  islands,  and  many  such  details  of  the  landing. 
The  names  of  the  chiefs  and  of  the  canoes  are  given  in  a  sort 
of  "  catalogue  of  ships,"  and  the  wars  of  the  settlers  are  nar- 
rated at  length,  with  the  heroic  exaggeration  common  to  the 
legends  of  all  lands. 

The  canoe-fleet  reached  New  Zealand  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, it  is  believed,  and  the  people  landed,  chanting  a  chorus- 
speech,  which  is  still  preserved : 

"Wc  come  at  last  to  this  fair  land — a  resting-place  ; 
Spirit  of  the  Earth,  to  thee,  wc,  coming  from  afar,  present  our  hearts  for 
food." 


Polynesians.  2-A7 

That  the  Maorics  arc  Polynesians  there  can  be  no  doubt :  a 
bird  with  them  is  "  maim,"  a  fish,  "  ika"  (the  Greek  'Mxyc,  be- 
come with  the  digamma  "  piscis  "  and  "  poisson  ;"  and  con- 
nected with  "  fisch  "  and  "  fish  "),  as  they  are  throughout  the 
Malayan  Archipelago  and  Polynesian  Isles  :  the  Maori  "  atua," 
a  god,  is  the  "  hotua"  of  the  Friendly  Islanders ;  the  "  wah- 
res,"  or  native  huts,  are  identical  in  all  the  islands ;  the  names 
of  the  chief  deities  are  the  same  throughout  Polynesia,  and 
the  practice  of  tattooing,  the  custom  of  carving  grotesque 
squatting  figures  on  tombs,  canoes,  and  "  pahs,"  and  that  of 
tabooing  things,  places,  times,  and  persons,  prevail  from  Ha- 
waii to  Stewart's  Land,  though  not  everywhere  so  strictly 
read  as  in  the  Tonga  Isles,  where  the  very  ducks  are  muzzled 
to  keep  them  from  disturbing  by  their  quacking  the  sacred 
stillness  of  "  tapu  time." 

Polynesian  traditions  mostly  point  to  the  Malay  peninsula 
as  the  cradle  of  the  race,  and  the  personal  resemblance  of  the 
Maories  to  the  Malays  is  very  strong  except  in  the  setting  of 
the  eyes ;  "while  the  figures  on  the  gate-posts  of  the  New 
Zealand  pahs  have  eyes  more  oblique  than  are  now  found 
among  the  Maori  people.  Strangely  enough,  the  New  Zea- 
land "  pah  "  is  identical  with  the  Burmese  "  stockade,"  but  the 
word  "  pah  "  stands  both  for  the  palisade  and  for  the  village 
of  wahres  which  it  contains.  The  Polynesian  and  Malay 
tongues  have  not  much  in  common ;  but  that  variations  of 
language  sufficiently  great  to  leave  no  apparent  tie  spring  up 
in  a  few  centuries,  can  not  be  denied  by  us  who  know  for 
certain  that  "  visible  "  and  "  optician  "  come  from  a  common 
root,  and  can  trace  the  steps  through  which  "  jour  "  is  derived 
from  "dies." 

The  tradition  of  the  Polynesians  is  that  they  came  from 
Paradise,  which  they  place,  in  the  Southern  islands,  to  the 
north ;  in  the  Northern  islands,  to  the  westward.  This  le- 
.gend  indicates  a  migration  from  Asia  to  the  Northern  isl- 
ands, and  thence  southward  to  New  Zealand,  and  accounts 
for  the  non  -  colonization  of  Australia  by  the  Polynesians. 
The  sea  between  New  Zealand  and  Australia  is  too  rough 
and  wide  to  be  traversed  by  canoes,  and  the  wind -chart 
shows  that  the  track  of  the  Malays  must  have  been  eastward 
along  the   equatorial  bolt  of  calms,  and  then   back   to  the 


248  Gkeater  Britain. 

south-west,  with  the  south-east  trade-wind  right  abeam  to  their 
canoes. 

The  wanderings  of  the  Polynesian  race  were  probably  not 
confined  to  the  Pacific.  Ethnology  is  as  yet  in  its  infancy: 
we  know  nothing  of  the  Tudas  of  the  Neilgherries ;  avc  ask  in 
vain  who  are  the  Gonds ;  we  are  in  doubt  about  the  Japanese; 
we  arc  lost  in  perplexity  as  to  who  we  may  be  ourselves ;  but 
there  is  at  least  as  much  ground  for  the  statement  that  the 
lied  Indians  are  Malays  as  for  the  assertion  that  we  are  Sax- 
ons. 

The  resemblances  between  the  Red  Indians  and  the  Pacific 
Islanders  are  innumerable.  Strachey's  account  of  the  Indians 
of  Virginia,  written  in  1  CI 2,  needs  but  a  change  in  the  names 
to  fit  the  Maorics :  Powhatan's  house  is  that  of  William 
Thompson.  Cannibalism  prevailed  in  Brazil  and  along  the 
Pacific  coast  of  North  America  at  the  time  of  their  discovery, 
and  even  the  Indians  of  Chili  ate  many  an  early  navigator ; 
the  aborigines  of  Vancouver's  Island  are  tattooed ;  their  ca- 
noes resemble  those  of  the  Malay's,  and  the  mode  of  paddling 
is  the  same  from  New  Zealand  to  Hudson's  Bay,  from  Florida 
to  Singapore.  Jade  ornaments  of  the  shape  of  the  Maori 
"  Heitiki "  (the  charm  worn  about  the  neck)  have  been  found 
by  the  French  in  Guadaloupe ;  the  giant  masonry  of  Central 
America  is  identical  with  that  of  Cambodia  and  Siam.  Small- 
legged  squatting  figures,  like  those  of  the  idols  of  China  and 
Japan,  not  only  surmount  the  gate-posts  of  the  NeAv  Zealand 
pahs,  but  are  found  eastward  to  Honduras,  westward  to  Buiv 
mah,  to  Tartary,  and  to  Ceylon.  The  fibre  mats,  common  to 
the  Polynesians  and  Red  Indians,  are  unknown  to  savages 
elsewhere,  and  the  feather  head-dresses  of  the  Maories  are 
almost  identical  with  those  of  the  Delawares  or  Hurons. 

In  the  Indians  of  America  and  of  Polynesia  there  is  the 
same  hatred  of  continued  toil,  and  the  same  readiness  to  en- 
gage in  violent  exertion  for  a  time.  Superstition  and  witch- 
craft are  common  to  all  untaught  peoples,  but  in  the  Malays 
and  red  men  they  take  similar  shapes ;  and  the  Indians  of 
Mexico  and  Peru  had,  like  all  the  Polynesians,  a  sacred  lan- 
guage, understood  only  by  the  priests.  The  American  altars 
were  one  with  the  temples  of  the  Pacific,  and  were  not  con- 
fined to  Mexico,  for  they  form  the  "  mounds  "  of  Ohio  and 


Polynesians.  249 

Illinois.  There  is  great  likeness  between  the  legend  of  Maui, 
the  Maori  hero,  and  that  of  Hiawatha,  especially  in  the  his- 
tory of  how  the  sun  was  noosed,  and  made  to  move  more 
slowly  through  the  skies,  so  as  to  give  men  long  days  for  toil. 
The  resemblance  of  the  Maori  "  runanga,"  or  assembly  for 
debate,  to  the  Indian  council,  is  extremely  close,  and  through- 
out America  and  Polynesia  a  singular  blending  of  poetry  and 
ferocity  is  characteristic  of  the  Malays. 

In  color,  the  Indians  and  Polynesians  are  not  alike ;  but 
color  does  not  seem  to  be,  ethnologically  speaking,  of  much 
account.  The  Hindoos  of  Calcutta  have  the  same  features  as 
those  of  Delhi ;  but  the  former  are  black,  the  latter  brown, 
or,  if  high-caste  men,  almost  white.  Exposure  to  sun  in  a 
damp,  hot  climate  seems  to  blacken  every  race  that  it  does 
not  destroy.  The  races  that  it  will  finally  destroy,  tropical 
heat  first  whitens.  The  English  planters  of  Mississippi  and 
Florida  are  extremely  dark,  yet  there  is  not  a  suspicion  of 
black  blood  in  their  veins  :  it  is  the  white  blood  of  the  slaves 
to  which  the  Abolitionists  refer  in  their  philippics.  The 
Jews  at  Bombay  and  Aden  are  of  a  deep  brown ;  in  Morocco 
they  are  swarthy ;  in  England,  nearly  white. 

Religious  rites  and  social  customs  outlast  both  physical 
type  and  language  ;  but  even  were  it  otherwise,  there  is  great 
resemblance  even  in  build  and  feature  between  the  Polyne- 
sians and  many  of  the  "  Red  Indian  "  tribes.  The  aboriginal 
people  of  New  York  State  are  described  by  the  early  navi- 
gators not  as  tall,  grave,  hooked-nose  men,  but  as  copper-col- 
ored, pleasant-looking,  and  with  quick,  shrewd  eyes ;  and  the 
Mexican  Indian  bears  more  likeness  to  the  Sandwich  Islander 
than  to  the  Delaware  or  Cherokee. 

In  reaching  South  America,  there  were  no  distances  to  be 
overcome  such  as  to  present  insurmountable  difliculties  to  the 
Malays.  Their  canoes  have  frequently,  within  the  years  that 
we  have  had  our  missionary  stations  in  the  islands,  made  in- 
voluntary voyages  of  six  or  seven  hundred  miles.  A  Western 
editor  has  said  of  Columbus  that  he  deserves  no  praise  for 
discovering  America,  as  it  is  so  large  that  he  could  not  well 
have  missed  it ;  but  Easter  Island  is  so  small  that  the  chances 
must  have  been  thousands  to  one  against  its  being  reached 
by  canoes  sailing  even  from  the  nearest  land  ;  yet  it  is  an  as- 


250  Greater  Britain. 

certaincd  fact  that  Easter  Island  was  peopled  by  the  Polyne- 
sians. Whatever  drove  canoes  to  Easter  Island  would  have 
driven  them  from  the  island  to  Chili  and  Peru.  The  Poly- 
nesian Malays  would  sometimes  be  taken  out  to  sea  by  sud- 
den storms,  by  war,  by  hunger,  by  love  of  change.  In  war- 
time, whole  tribes  have,  within  historic  days,  been  clapped 
into  their  boats,  and  sent  to  sea  by  a  merciful  conqueror  who 
had  dined  :  this  occui*s,  however,  only  when  the  market  is  al- 
ready surfeited  with  human  joints. 

In  sailing  from  America  to  New  Zealand,  we  met  strong 
westerly  winds  before  we  had  gone  half-way  across  the  seas, 
and,  south  of  the  trade-wind  region,  these  blow  constantly  to 
within  a  short  distance  of  the  American  coast,  where  they  are 
lost  upon  the  edge  of  the  Chilian  current.  A  canoe  blown 
off  from  the  Southern  islands,  and  running  steadily  before  the 
wind,  would  be  cast  on  the  Peruvian  coast  near  Quito. 

When  Columbus  landed  in  the  Atlantic  islands  he  was, 
perhaps,  not  mistaken  in  his  belief  that  it  was  "  The  Indies  " 
that  he  had  found — an  India  peopled  by  the  Malay  race,  till 
lately  the  most  widely-scattered  of  all  the  nations  of  the 
world,  but  one  which  the  English  seem  destined  to  supplant. 

The  Maories,  without  doubt,  were  originally  Malays,  emi- 
grants from  the  winterless  climate  of  the  Malay  Peninsula  and 
Polynesian  Archipelago  ;  and,  although  the  northernmost  por- 
tions of  New  Zealand  suited  them  not  ill,  the  cold  winters  of 
the  South  Island  prevented  the  spread  of  the  bands  they 
planted  there.  At  all  times  it  has  been  remarked  by  ethnolo- 
gists and  acclimatizers  that  it  is  easier  by  far  to  carry  men 
and  beasts  from  the  poles  toward  the  tropics  than  from  the 
tropics  to  the  colder  regions.  The  Malays,  in  coming  to 
New  Zealand,  unknowingly  broke  one  of  Nature's  laws,  and 
their  descendants  are  paying  the  penalty  in  extinction. 


Parewanui  Pad.  251 


CHAPTER  IV. 

PAREWANUI     TAIL 

'*  Here  is  Petatone. 
This  is  the  10th  of  December  ; 
The  sun  shines,  and  the  birds  sing  ; 
Clear  is  the  water  in  rivers  and  streams ; 
Bright  is  the  sky,  and  the  sun  is  high  in  the  air. 
This  is  the  10th  of  December  ; 
But  where  is  the  money  ? 

Three  years  has  this  matter  in  many  debates  been  discussed, 
And  here  at  last  is  Petatone ; 
But  where  is  the  money  ?" 

A  band  of  Maori  -women,  slowly  chanting  in  a  high,  strain- 
ed key,  stood  at  the  gate  of  a  pah,  and  met  with  this  song  a 
few  Englishmen  who  were  driving  rapidly  on  to  their  land. 

Our  track  lay  through  a  swamp  of  the  New  Zealand  flax. 
Hugh  sword-like  leaves  and  giant  flower-stalks  all  but  hid 
from  view  the  Maori  stockades.  To  the  left  was  a  village  of 
low  wahres,  fenced  round  with  a  double  row  of  lofty  posts, 
carved  with  rude  images  of  gods  and  men,  and  having  post- 
erns here  and  there.  On  the  right  were  groves  of  karakas, 
children  of  Tanemahuta,  the  New  Zealand  sacred  trees — un- 
der their  shade,  on  a  hill,  a  camp  and  another  and  larger  pah. 
In  startling  contrast  to  the  dense  masses  of  the  oily  leaves, 
there  stretched  a  great  extent  of  light-green  sward,  where 
there  were  other  camps,  and  a  tall  flag-staff,  from  which  float- 
ed the  white  flag  and  the  union-jack,  emblems  of  British  sov- 
ereignty and  peace. 

A  thousand  kilted  Maories  dotted  the  green  landscape  with 
patches  of  brilliant  tartans  and  scarlet  cloth.  Women  lounged 
about,  whiling  away  the  time  with  dance  and  song ;  and  from 
all  the  corners  of  the  glade  the  soft  cadence  of  the  Maori  cry 
of  welcome  came  floating  to  us  on  the  breeze,  sweet  as  the 
sound  of  distant  bells. 

As  we  drove  quickly  on,  we  found  ourselves  in  the  midst 


252  Greater  Britain. 

of  a  thronging  crowd  of  square-built  men,  brown  in  color,  and 
for  the  most  part  not  much  darker  than  Spaniards,  but  with 
here  and  there  a  woolly  negro  in  their  ranks.  Glancing  at 
them  as  we  were  hurried  past,  we  saw  that  the  men  were  ro- 
bust, well-limbed,  and  tall.  They  greeted  us  pleasantly  with 
many  a  cheerful,  open  smile,  but  the  faces  of  the  older  people 
Avcre  horribly  tattooed  in  spiral  curves.  The  chiefs  carried 
battle-clubs  of  jade  and  bone,  the  women  wore  strange  orna- 
ments. At  the  flag-staff  we  pulled  up,  and,  while  the  prelim- 
inaries of  the  council  were  arranged,  had  time  to  discuss  with 
Maori  and  with"Pakeha"  (white  man)  the  questions  that 
had  brought  us  thither. 

The  purchase  of  an  enormous  block  of  land — that  of  the 
Manawatu — had  long  been  an  object  wished  for  and  worked 
for  by  the  Provincial  Government  of  Wellington.  The  com- 
pletion of  the  sale  it  was  that  had  brought  the  superintendent, 
Dr.  Featherston,  and  humbler  Pakehas  to  Parewanui  Pah.  It 
was  not  only  that  the  land  was  wanted  by  way  of  room  for 
the  flood  of  settlers,  but  purchase  by  Government  was,  more- 
over, the  only  means  whereby  war  between  the  various  native 
claimants  of  the  land  could  be  jirevented.  The  Pakeha  and 
Maori  had  agreed  upon  a  price ;  the  question  that  remained 
for  settlement  Avas  how  the  money  should  be  shared.  One 
tribe  had  owned  the  land  from  the  earliest  times ;  another  had 
conquered  some  miles  of  it ;  a  third  had  had  one  of  its  chiefs 
cooked  and  eaten  upon  the  ground.  In  the  eye  of  the  Maori 
law,  the  last  of  these  titles  was  the  best :  the  blood  of  a  chief 
overrides  all  mere  historic  claims.  The  two  strongest  human 
motives  concurred  to  make  war  probable,  for  avarice  and  jeal- 
ousy alike  prevented  agreement  as  to  the  division  of  the  spoil. 

Each  of  the  three  tribes  claiming  had  half  a  dozen  allied 
and  related  nations  xipon  the  ground ;  every  man  was  there 
who  had  a  claim,  direct  or  indirect,  or  thought  he  had,  to  any 
portion  of  the  block.  Individual  ownership  and  tribal  owner- 
ship conflicted.  The  Ngatiapa  were  well-armed ;  the  Ngati- 
raukawa  had  their  rifles ;  the  Wanganuis  had  sent  for  theirs. 
The  greatest  tact  on  the  part  of  Dr.  Featherston  was  needed 
to  prevent  a  fight  such  as  would  have  roused  New  Zealand 
from  Auckland  to  Port  Nicholson. 

On  a  signal  from  the   superintendent,  the   heralds  went 


Pare  wan  ui  Pah.  253 

round  the  camps  and  pahs  to  call  the  tribes  to  council.  The 
summons  was  a  long-drawn  minor-descending  scale :  a  plaint- 
ive cadence,  which  at  a  distance  blends  into  a  bell-like  chord. 
The  words  mean,  "  Come  hither !  Come  hither  !  Come  ! 
come  !  Maories  !  Come  !"  and  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren soon  came  thronging  in  from  every  side,  the  chiefs  bear- 
ing sceptres  and  spears  of  ceremony,  and  their  women  wear- 
ing round  their  necks  the  symbol  of  nobility,  the  Heitiki,  or 
greenstone  god.  These  images,  we  are  told,  have  pedigrees, 
and  names  like  those  of  men. 

We,  with  the  resident  magistrate  of  Wanganui,  seated  our- 
selves beneath  the  flag-staff.  A  chief,  meeting  the  people  as 
they  came  up,  stayed  them  with  the  gesture  that  Homer  as- 
cribes to  Hector,  and  bade  them  sit  in  a  huge  circle  round  the 
spar. 

No  sooner  were  we  seated  on  our  mat  than  there  ran  slow- 
ly into  the  centre  of  the  ring  a  plumed  and  kilted  chief,  with 
sparkling  eyes,  the  perfection  of  a  savage.  Halting  sudden- 
ly, he  raised  himself  upon  his  toes,  frowned,  and  stood  bran- 
dishing his  short,  feathered  spear.  It  was  Hunia  te  Hakcke, 
the  young  chief  of  the  Ngatiapa. 

Throwing  off  his  plaid,  he  commenced  to  speak,  springing 
hither  and  thither  with  leopard-like  freedom  of  gait,  and  some- 
times leaping  high  into  the  air  to  emphasize  a  word.  Fierce 
as  were  the  gestures,  his  speech  was  conciliatory,  and  the 
Maori  flowed  from  his  lips — a  soft  Tuscan  tongue.  As,  with 
a  movement  full  of  vigorous  grace,  he  sprang  back  to  the 
ranks  to  take  his  seat,  there  ran  round  the  ring  a  hum  and 
buzz  of  popular  applause. 

"  Governor "  Hunia  was  followed  by  a  young  Wanganui 
chief  who  wore  hunting-breeches  and  high  boots,  and  a  Ions; 
black  mantle  over  his  European  clothes.  There  was  some- 
thing odd  in  the  shape  of  the  cloak ;  and  when  we  came  to 
look  closely  at  it,  we  found  that  it  was  the  skirt  of  the  riding- 
habit  of  his  half-caste  wife.  The  great  chiefs  paid  so  little 
heed  to  this  flippant  fellow,  as  to  stand  up  and  harangue  their 
tribes  in  the  middle  of  his  speech,  which  came  thus  to  an  un- 
timely end. 

A  funny  old  gray-beard,  Waitere  Mara  Maru,  next  rose, 
and,  smothering  down  the  jocularity  of  his  face,  turned  to- 


251  Greater  Britain. 

ward  us  for  a  moment  the  typical  head  of  Peter,  as  you  see  it 
on  the  windows  of  every  modern  church — for  a  moment  only, 
for,  as  he  raised  his  hand  to  wave  his  tribal  sceptre,  his  apos- 
tolic drapery  began  to  slip  from  off  his  shoulders,  and  he  had 
to  clutch  at  it  with  the  energy  of  a  topman  taking  in  a  reef 
in  a  whole  gale.  His  speech  was  full  of  Nestorian  proverbs 
and  wise  saws,  but  he  wandered  off  into  a  history  of  the 
Wanganui  lands,  by  which  he  soon  became  as  wearied  as  we 
ourselves  were ;  for  he  stopped  short,  and  with  a  twinkle  of 
the  eye,  said,  "  Ah  !  Waitere  is  no  longer  young :  he  is  climb- 
ing the  snow-clad  mountain  Ruakine ;  he  is  becoming  an  old 
man  ;"  and  down  he  sat. 

Karanama,  a  small  Ngatiraukawa  chief  with  a  white  mus- 
tache, who  looked  like  an  old  French  concierge,  followed 
Mara  Mara,  and,  with  much  use  of  his  sceptre,  related  a 
dream  foretelling  the  happy  issue  of  the  negotiations ;  for  the 
little  man  was  one  of  those  "dreamers  of  dreams"  against 
Avhom  Moses  warned  the  Israelites. 

Karanama's  was  not  the  only  trance  and  vision  of  which 
we  heard  in  the  course  of  these  debates.  The  Maories  be- 
lieve that  in  their  dreams  the  seers  hear  great  bands  of  spirits 
singing  chants  :  these,  when  they  wake,  the  prophets  reveal  to 
all  the  people ;  but  it  is  remarked  that  the  vision  is  generally 
to  the  advantage  of  the  seer's  tribe. 

Karanama's  speech  was  answered  by  the  head  chief  of  the 
Rangitane  Maories,  Te  Peeti  Te  Awe  Awe,  who,  throwing  off 
his  upper  clothing  as  he  warmed  to  his  subject,  and  strutting 
pompously  round  and  round  the  ring,  challenged  Karanama 
to  immediate  battle,  or  his  tribe  to  general  encounter;  but  he 
cooled  down  as  he  went  on,  and  in  his  last  sentence  showed 
us  that  Maori  oratory,  however  ornate  usually,  can  be  made 
extremely  terse.  "  It  is  hot,"  he  said  —  "  it  is  hot,  and  the 
very  birds  are  loth  to  sing.  We  have  talked  for  a  week,  and 
are  therefore  dry.  Let  us  take  our  share — £10,000,  or  what- 
ever we  can  get,  and  then  we  shall  be  dry  no  more." 

The  Maori  custom  of  walking  about,  dancing,  leaping,  un- 
dressing, running,  and  brandishing  spears  during  the  delivery 
of  a  speech,  is  convenient  for  all  parties :  to  the  speaker,  be- 
cause it  gives  him  time  to  think  of  what  he  shall  say  next ;  to 
the  listener,  because  it  allows  him  to  weigh  the  speaker's 


Pare  wan  ui  Paii.  255 

words ;  to  the  European  hearer,  because  it  permits  the  inter- 
preter to  keep  pace  with  the  orator  without  an  effort.  On 
this  occasion,  the  resident  magistrate  of  Wanganui,  Mr.  Bul- 
let*, a  Maori  scholar  of  eminence,  and  the  attached  friend  of 
some  of  the  chiefs,  interpreted  for  Dr.  Featherston ;  and  we 
were  allowed  to  lean  over  him  in  such  a  way  as  to  hear  every 
word  that  passed.  That  the  able  Superintendent  of  Welling- 
ton— the  great  protector  of  the  Maories,  the  man  to  whom 
they  look  as  to  Queen  Victoria's  second  in  command,  should 
be  wholly  dependent  upon  interpreters,  however  skilled,  seems 
almost  too  singular  to  be  believed  ;  but  it  is  possible  that  Dr. 
Featherston  may  find  in  pretended  want  of  knowledge  much 
advantage  to  the  Government.  He  is  able  to  collect  his 
thoughts  before  he  replies  to  a  difficult  question  ;  he  can  allow 
an  epithet  to  escape  his  notice  in  the  filter  of  translation  ;  he 
can  listen  and  speak  with  greater  dignity. 

The  day  was  wearing  on  before  Te  Peeti's  speech  was 
done,  and,  as  the  Maories  say,  our  waistbands  began  to  slip 
down  low ;  so  all  now  went  to  lunch,  both  Maori  and  Pakeha, 
they  sitting  in  circles,  each  with  his  bowl,  or  flax-blade  dish, 
and  wooden  spoon,  we  having  a  table  and  a  chair  or  two  in 
the  Mission-house ;  but  we  were  so  tempted  by  Hori  Kingi's 
white-bait  that  we  begged  some  of  him  as  we  passed.  The 
Maories  boil  the  little  fish  in  milk,  and  flavor  them  with  leeks. 
Great  fish,  meat,  vegetables,  almost  all  they  eat,  in  short,  save 
white-bait,  is  "  steamed "  in  the  under-ground  native  oven. 
A  hole  is  dug,  and  filled  with  wood,  and  stones  are  piled  upon 
the  wood,  a  small  opening  being  left  for  draught.  While  the 
wood  is  burning,  the  stones  become  red-hot,  and  fall  through 
into  the  hole.  They  are  then  covered  with  damp  fern,  or  else 
with  wet  mats  of  flax  plaited  at  the  moment ;  the  meat  is  put 
in,  and  covered  with  more  mats  ;  the  whole  is  sprinkled  with 
water,  and  then  earth  is  heaped  on  till  the  vapor  ceases  to  es- 
cape. The  joint  takes  about  an  hour,  and  is  delicious.  Fish 
is  wrapped  in  a  kind  of  dock-leaf,  and  so  steamed. 

While  the  men's  eating  was  thus  going  on,  many  of  the 
women  stood  idly  round,  and  we  were  enabled  to  judge  of 
Maori  beauty.  A  profusion  of  long,  crisp  curls,  a  short  black 
pipe  thrust  between  stained  lips,  a  pair  of  black  eyes  gleam- 
ing from  a  tattooed  face,  denote  the  Maori  belle,  who  wears 


256  Greater  Britain. 

for  her  only  robe  a  long  bed-gown  of  dirty  calico,  but  whose 
cars  and  neck  arc  tricked  out  with  greenstone  ornaments,  the 
signs  of  birth  and  wealth.  Here  and  there  you  find  a  girl 
with  long,  smooth  tresses,  and  almond-shaped  black  eyes: 
these  charms  often  go  along  with  prominent,  thin  features, 
and  suggest  at  once  the  Jewess  and  the  gipsy  girl.  The 
women  smoke  continually,  the  men  not  much. 

When  at  four  o'clock  we  returned  to  the  flag-staff,  we 
found  that  the  temperature,  which  during  the  morning  had 
been  too  hot,  had  become  that  of  a  fine  English  June — the  air 
light,  the  trees  and  grass  lit  by  a  gleaming  yellow  sunshine 
that  reminded  me  of  the  Californian  haze. 

During  luncheon  we  had  heard  that  Dr.  Featherston's 
proposals  as  to  the  division  of  the  purchase-money  had  been 
accepted  by  the  Ngatiapa,  but  not  by  Hunia  himself,  whose 
vanity  would  brook  no  scheme  not  of  his  own  conception. 
We  were  no  sooner  returned  to  the  ring  than  he  burst.in  upon 
us  with  a  defiant  speech.  "Unjust,"  he  declared,  "as  was 
the  proposition  of  great  '  Petatone '  (Feathcrston),  he  would 
have  accepted  it  for  the  sake  of  peace  had  he  been  allowed  to 
divide  the  tribal  share ;  but  as  the  Wanganuis  insisted  on 
having  a  third  of  his  £15,000,  and  as  Petatone  seemed  to 
support  them  in  their  claim,  he  should  have  nothing  more  to 
do  with  the  sale."  "  The  Wanganuis  claim  as  our  relatives," 
he  said  ;  "  verily,  the  pumpkin-shoots  spread  far." 

Karanama,  the  seer,  stood  up  to  answer  Hunia,  and  began 
his  speech  in  a  tone  of  ridicule.  "  Hunia  is  like  the  ti-tree  : 
if  you  cat  him  down,  he  sprouts  again."  Hunia  sat  quietly 
through  a  good  deal  of  this  kind  of  wit,  till  at  last  some  epi- 
thet provoked  him  to  interrupt  the  speaker.  "  What  a  fine 
fellow  you  are,  Karanama ;  you'll  tell  us  soon  that  you've 
two  pair  of  legs  !"  "  Sit  down  !"  shrieked  Karanama,  and  a 
word-war  ensued,  but  the  abuse  was  too  full  of  native  raciness 
and  vigor  to  be  fit  for  English  ears.  The  chiefs  kept  danc- 
ing round  the  ring,  threatening  each  other  with  their  spears. 
"  Why  do  not  you  hurl  at  me,  Karanama  ?"  said  Hunia ;  "  it 
is  easier  to  parry  spears  than  lies."     At  last  Hunia  sat  down. 

Karanama,  feinting  and  making  at  him  with  his  spear,  re- 
proached Hunia  with  a  serious  flaw  in  his  pedigree — a  blot 
which  is  said  to  account  for  Ilunia's  hatred  to  the  Ngatirau- 


Pare wan ui  Pa ii.  207 

kawa,  to  whom  his  mother  was  for  years  a  slave.  ITunia, 
without  rising  from  the  ground,  shrieked  "  liar  !"  Karanama 
again  spoke  the  obnoxious  word.  Springing  from  the  ground, 
Hunia  snatched  his  spear  from  where  it  stood,  and  ran  at  his 
enemy  as  though  to  strike  him.  Karanama  stood  stock-still. 
Coming  up  to  him  at  a  charge,  Hunia  suddenly  stopped, 
raised  himself  on  tiptoe,  shaking  his  spear,  and  flung  out 
sonre  contemptuous  epithet ;  then  turned,  and  stalked  slowly, 
with  a  springing  gait,  back  to  his  own  corner  of  the  ring. 
There  he  stood,  haranguing  his  people  in  a  bitter  under-tone. 
Karanama  did  the  like  with  his.  The  interpreters  could  not 
keep  pace  with  what  was  said.  "We  understood  that  the 
chiefs  were  calling  each  upon  his  tribe  to  support  him,  if 
need  were,  in  war.  After  a  few  minutes  of  this  pause,  they 
wheeled  round,  as  though  by  a  common  impulse,  and  again 
began  to  pour  out  torrents  of  abuse.  The  applause  became 
frequent,  hums  quickened  into  shouts,  cheer  followed  cheer, 
till  at  last  the  ring  was  alive  with  men  and  women  springing 
from  the  ground,  and  crying  out  on  the  opposing  leader  for  a 
dastard. 

We  had  previously  been  told  to  have  no  fear  that  resort 
would  be  had  to  blows.  The  Maories  never  fight  upon  a  sud- 
den quarrel :  war  is  with  them  a  solemn  act,  entered  upon 
only  after  much  deliberation.  Those  of  us  who  were  stran- 
gers to  New  Zealand  were  nevertheless  not  without  our 
doubts,  while  for  half  an  hour  we  lay  upon  the  grass  watching 
the  armed  champions  running  round  the  ring,  challenging 
each  other  to  mortal  combat  on  the  spot. 

The  chieftains  at  last  became  exhausted,  and  the  Mission- 
bell  beginning  to  toll  for  evening  chapel,  Hunia  broke  off  in 
the  middle  of  his  abuse, "  Ah  !  I  hear  the  bell !"  and,  turning, 
stalked  out  of  the  ring  toward  his  pah,  leaving  it  to  be  infer, 
red,  by  those  who  did  not  know  him,  that  he  was  going  to 
attend  the  service.  The  meeting  broke  up  in  confusion,  and 
the  Upper  Wanganui  tribes  at  once  began  their  mai*ch  to- 
ward the  mountains,  leaving  behind  them  only  a  delegation 
of  their  chiefs. 

As  we  drove  down  to  the  coast,  Ave  talked  over  the  close 
resemblance  of  the  Maori  runanga  to  the  Homeric  council ;  it 
had  struck  us  all.     Here,  as  in  the  Greek  camp,  we  had  the 


258  Greater  Britain. 

ring  of  people,  into  which  advanced  the  lance-heaving  or  seep- 
tre-wearing  chiefs,  they  alone  speaking,  and  the  people  hack- 
ing them  only  hy  a  hum ;  "  The  hlock  of  wood  dictates  not 
to  the  carver,  neither  the  people  to  their  chiefs,"  is  a  Maori 
proverb.  The  boasting  of  ancestry,  and  bragging  of  deeds 
and  military  exploits,  to  which  modern  wind-bags  would  only 
casually  allude,  was  also  thoroughly  Homeric.  In  Hunia  we 
had  our  Achilles ;  the  retreat  of  Hunia  to  his  wahre  was  that 
of  Achilles  to  his  tent ;  the  cause  of  quarrel  alone  was  differ- 
ent, though  in  both  cases  it  aroso  out  of  the  division  of  spoil 
— in  the  one  case  the  result  of  lucky  wars,  in  the  other  of  the 
Pakeha's  weakness.  The  Argive  and  Maori  leaders  arc  one  in 
fire,  figure,  port,  and  mien  ;  alike,  too,  even  in  their  sulkiness. 
In  Waitere  and  Aperahama  Tipai  we  had  two  Nestors ;  our 
Thersites  was  Porea,  the  jester,  a  half-mad  buffoon,  continu- 
ally mimicking  the  chiefs  or  interrupting  them,  and  being  by 
them  or  their  messengers  as  often  kicked  and  cuffed.  In  the 
frequency  of  repetition,  the  use  of  proverbs  ana  of  simile,  the 
Maories  resemble  not  Homer's  Greeks  so  much  as  Homer's 
self ;  but  the  calling  together  of  the  people  by  the  heralds,  the 
secret  conclave  of  the  chiefs,  the  feast,  the  conduct  of  the  asr 
sembly — all  were  the  exact  repetition  of  the  events  recorded 
in  the  first  and  second  books  of  the  "Iliad"  as  having  hap 
pened  on  the  Trojan  plains.  The  single  point  of  difference 
was  not  in  favor  of  the  Greeks  ;  the  Maori  women  took  their 
place  in  council  with  the  men. 

As  we  drove  home,  a  storm  came  on,  and  hung  about  the 
coast  so  long  that  it  was  not  till  near  eleven  at  night  that  avc 
were-  able  to  take  our  swim  in  the  heated  waters  of  the  Mana- 
watu  River,  and  frighten  off  every  duck  and  heron  in  the  dis- 
trict. 

In  the  morning  we  rose  to  alarming  news.  Upon,  the  pre- 
text of  the  presence  in  the  neighborhood  of  the-  Hau-hau 
chief  "YVi  Hapi  with  a  war-party  of  200  men,  the-  unarmed 
Parewanui  natives  had  sent  to  Wanganui  for  their  guns,  and 
it  was  only  by  a  conciliatory  speech  at  the  midnight  runanga 
that  Mr.  Buller  had  succeeded  in  preventing  a  complete  break- 
up of  all  the  camps,  if  not  an  intertribal  war.  There  seemed 
to  be  white  men  behind  the  scenes  who  were  not  friendly  to 
the  sale,  and  the  debate  had  lasted  from  dark  till  dawn. 


Parewanui  Pau.  259 

While  we  wove  at  breakfast,  a  Ngatiapa  officer  of  the  na- 
tive contingent  brought  down  a  letter  to  Dr.  Featherston  from 
Ilunia  and  Ilori  Kingi,  the  tribal  chiefs,  calling  us  to.  a  gen- 
eral meeting  of  the  tribes  convened  for  noon,  to  be  held  in 
the  Ngatiapa  Pah.  The  letter  was  addressed,  "  Kia  te  Peta- 
tonc  te  Iluperintene  " — "  To  the  Featherston,  the  Superintend- 
ent " — the  alterations  in  the  chief  words  being  made  to  bring 
them  within  the  grasp  of  Maori  tongues,  which  can  not  sound 
v's,  tfA's,  nor  sibilants  of  any  kind.  The  absence  of  harsh 
sounds,  and  the  rule  which  makes  every  word  end  with  a 
vowel,  give  a  peculiar  softness  and  charm  to  the  Maori  lan- 
guage. Sugar  becomes  huka ;  scissors,  hikiri ;  sheep,  hipi ; 
and  so  with  all  English  words  adopted  into  Maori.  The  ren- 
dering of  the  Hebrew  names  of  the  Old  Testament  is  often 
singular:  Genesis  becomes  Kenehi;  Exodus  is  altered  into 
Ekoruhe;  Leviticus  is  hardly  recognizable  in  Rewitikuha; 
Tiuteronomi  reads  strangely  for  Deuteronomy,  and  Hohua  for 
Joshua;  Jacob,  Isaac,  Moses,  become  Hakopa,  Ihaka,  and 
Mohi ;  Egypt  is  softened  into  Ihipa,  Jordan  into  Horamo. 
The  list  of  the  nations  of  Canaan  seems  to  have  been  a  stum- 
bling-block in  the  missionaries'  way.  The  success  obtained 
with  Girgashites  has  not  been  great ;  it  stands  Kirekahi ; 
Gaash  is  transmuted  into  Kaaha,  and  Eleazar  into  Erea- 
tara. 

When  we  drove  on  to  the  ground,  all  was  at  a  dead-lock — 
the  flag-staff  bare,  the  chiefs  sleeping  in  their  wahres,  and  the 
common  folk  whiling  away  the  hours  with  haka  songs.  Dr. 
Featherston  retired  from  the  ground,  declaring  that  till  the 
queen's  flag  was  hoisted  he  would  attend  no  debate,  but  he 
permitted  us  to  wander  in  among  the  Maories. 

We  were  introduced  to  Tamiana  te  Rauparaha,  chief  of 
the  Ngatitoa  branch  of  the  Ngatiraukawa,  and  son  of  the 
great  cannibal  chief  of  the  same  name  who  murdered  Captain 
Wakefield.  Old  Rauparaha  it  was  who  hired  an  English 
ship  to  carry  him  and  his  nation  to  the  South  Island,  where 
they  ate  several  tribes,  boiling  the  chiefs,  by  the  captain's  con- 
sent, in  the  ship's  coppers,  and  salting  down  for  future  use  the 
common  people.  When  the  captain,  on  return  to  port,  claim- 
ed his  price,  Rauparaha  told  him  to  go  about  his  business,  or 
he  should  be  salted  too.     The  captain  took  the  hint,  but  he 


260  Greater  Britain. 

did  not  escape  for  long,  as  he  was  finally  eaten  by  the  Sand- 
wich Islanders  in  Hawaii. 

In  answer  to  our  request  for  a  dance-song,  Tamiana  and 
Horomona  Toremi  replied  through  an  interpreter  that  "  the 
hands  of  the  singers  should  beat  time  as  fast  as  the  pinions 
of  the  wild  duck ;"  and  in  a  minute  we  were  in  the  middle  of 
an  animated  crowd  of  boys  and  women  collected  by  Porea, 
the  buffoon. 

As  soon  as  the  singers  had  squatted  upon  the  grass,  the 
jester  began  to  run  slowly  up  and  down  between  their  ranks 
as  they  sat  swinging  backward  and  forward  in  regular  time, 
groaning  in  chorus,  and  looking  upward  with  distorted  faces. 

In  a  second  dance,  a  girl  standing  out  upon  the  grass 
chanted  the  air — a  kind  -of  capstan-song — and  then  the  "  dan- 
cers," who  were  seated  in  one  long  row,  joined  in  chorus, 
breathing  violently  in  perfect  time,  half  forming  words,  but 
not  notes,  swinging  from  side  to  side  like  the  howling  dervish- 
es, and  using  frightful  gestures.  This  strange  whisper-roar- 
ing went  on  increasing  in  rapidity  and  fierceness,  till  at  last 
the  singers  worked  themselves  into  a  frenzy,  in  which  they 
rolled  their  eyes,  stiffened  the  arms  and  legs,  clutched  and 
clawed  with  the  fingers,  and  snorted  like  maddened  horses. 
Stripping  off  their  clothes,  they  looked  more  like  the  Maories 
of  thirty  years  ago  than  those  who  see  them  only  at  the  mis- 
sion-stations would  believe.  Other  song-dances,  in  which  the 
singers  stood  striking  their  heels  at  measured  intervals  upon 
the  earth,  were  taken  up  with  equal  vigor  by  the  boys  and 
women,  the  grown  men  in  their  dignity  keeping  themselves 
aloof,  although  in  his  heart  every  Maori  loves  mimetic  dance 
and  song.  "We  remarked  that  in  the  "  kaka  "  the  old  women 
seemed  more  in  earnest  than  the  young,  who  were  always 
bursting  into  laughter,  and  forgetting  words  and  time. 

The  savage  love  for  semitones  makes  Maori  music  some- 
what wearisome  to  the  English  ear ;  so  after  a  time  we  began 
to  walk  through  the  pahs  and  sketch  the  Maories,  to  their 
great  delight.  I  was  drawing  the  grand  old  head  of  a  ven- 
erable dame — Oriuhia  te  Aka — when  she  asked  to  see  what  I 
was  about.  As  soon  as  I  showed  her  the  sketch  she  began  to 
call  me  names,  and  from  her  gestures  I  saw  that  the  insult 
was  in  the  omission  of  the  tattooing  on  her  chin.     When  I 


Parewanui  Pah.  261 

in  sorted  the  stripes  and  curves,  her  delight  was  such  that  I 
greatly  feared  she  would  have  embraced  me. 

Strolling  into  the  karaka  groves,  we  came  upon  a  Maori 
wooden  tomb,  of  which  the  front  was  carved  with  figures 
three  feet  high,  grotesque  and  obscene.  Gigantic  eyes,  hands 
bearing  clubs,  limbs  without  bodies,  and  bodies  without  limbs, 
were  figured  here  and  there  among  more  perfect  carvings, 
and  the  whole  was  of  a  character  which  the  Maories  of  to-day 
disown  as  they  do  cannibalism,  wishing  to  have  these  horrid 
things  forgotten.  The  sudden  rise  of  the  Hau-hau  fanaticism 
within  the  last  few  years  lias  shown  us  that  the  layer  of  civil- 
ization by  which  the  old  Maori  habits  are  overlaid  is  thin  in- 
deed. 

The  flags  remained  down  all  day,  and  in  the  afternoon  we 
returned  to  the  coast  to  shoot  duck  and  pukeko,  a  sort  of 
moor-hen.  It  was  not  easy  work,  for  the  birds  fell  in  the  flax- 
swamp,  and  the  giant  sword-like  leaves  of  the  JPhormlum 
tenax  cut  our  hands  as  we  pushed  our  way  througn  its  dense 
clumps  and  bushes,  while  some  of  the  party  suffered  badly 
from  the  sun  :  Maui,  the  Maories  say,  must  have  chained  him 
up  too  near  the  earth.  After  dark,  we  could  see  the  glare  of 
the  fires  in  the  karaka  groves,  where  the  Maories  were  in  coun- 
cil, and  a  Government  surveyor  came  in  to  report  that  he  had 
met  the  dissentient  "Wanganuis  riding  fast  toward  the  hills. 

In  the  morning  we  were  allowed  to  stay  upon  the  coast  till 
ten  or  eleven  o'clock,  when  a  messenger  came  down  from  Mr. 
Buller  to  call  us  to  the  pah:  the  council  of  the  chiefs  had 
again  sat  all  night — for  the  Maories  act  upon  their  proverb 
that  the  eyes  of  great  chiefs  should  know  no  rest — and  Hunia 
had  carried  every  thing  before  him  in  the  debate. 

As  soon  as  the  ring  was  formed,  Hunia  apologized  for  the 
pulling  down  of  the  queen's  flag ;  it  had  been  done,  he  said, 
as  a  sign  that  the  sale  was  broken  off,  not  as  an  act  of  disre- 
spect. Having,  in  short,  had  things  entirely  his  own  way,  he 
was  disposed  to  be  extremely  friendly  both  to  whites  and 
Maories.  The  sale,  he  said,  must  be  brought  about,  or  the 
"  world  would  be  on  fire  with  an  intertribal  war.  What  is 
the  good  of  the  mountain-land  ?  There  is  nothing  to  eat  but 
stones  ;  granite  is  a  hard,  but  not  a  strengthening  food,  and 
women  and  land  are  the  ruin  of  men." 


2(32  Greater  Britain. 

After  congratulatory  speeches  from  other  chiefs,  some  of 
the  older  men  treated  us  to  histories  of  the  deeds  that  had 
been  wrought  upon  the  block  of  land.  Some  of  their  speeches 
— notably  those  of  Aperahama,  and  Ihakara — were  largely 
built  up  of  legendary  poems,  but  the  orators  quoted  the  poetry 
as  such  only  when  in  doubt  how  far  the  sentiments  were  those 
of  the  assembled  people :  when  they  were  backed  by  the  hum 
which  denotes  applause,  they  at  once  commenced  with  singu- 
lar art  to  weave  the  poetry  into  that  which  was  their  own. 

As  soon  as  the  speeches  were  over,  Ilunia  and  Ihakara 
marched  up  to  the  flag-staff,  carrying  between  them  the  deed 
of  sale.  Putting  it  down  before  Dr.  Featherston,  they  shook 
hands  with  each  other  and  with  him,  and  swore  that  for  the 
future  there  should  be  eternal  friendship  between  their  tribes. 
The  deed  was  then  signed  by  many  hundred  men  and  women, 
and  Dr.  Featherston  started  with  Captain  te  Kepa,  of  the  na- 
tive contingent,  to  fetch  the  £25,000  from  Wanganui  town, 
the  Maories  tiring  their  rifles  into  the  air  as  a  salute. 

The  superintendent  was  no  sooner  gone  than  a  kind  of 
solemn  grief  seemed  to  come  over  the  assembled  people.  Aft- 
er all,  they  were  selling  the  graves  «of  their  ancestors,  they  ar- 
gued. The  wife  of  Hamuera,  seizing  her  husband's  green- 
stone club,  ran  out  from  the  ranks  of  the  women,  and  began 
to  intone  an  impromptu  song,  which  was  echoed  by  the  wom- 
en in  a  pathetic  chorus-chant : 

"The  sun  shines,  but  we  quit  our  land ;  we  abandon  forever  its  forests,  its 

mountains,  its  groves,  its  lakes,  its  shores. 
All  its  fair  fisheries,  here,  under  the  bright  sun,  forever  we  renounce. 
It  is  a  lovely  day  ;  fair  will  be  the  children  that  are  born  to-day ;  but  we 

quit  our  land. 
In  some  parts  there  is  forest ;  in  others,  the  ground  is  skimmed  over  by 

the  birds  in  their  flight. 
Upon  the  trees  there,  is  fruit ;  in  the  streams,  fish  ;  in  the  fields,  potatoes ; 

fern-roots  in  the  bush  ;  but  we  quit  cur  land." 

It  is  in  chorus-speeches  of  this  kind  that  David's  psalms 
must  have  been  recited  by  the  Jews ;  but  on  this  occasion 
there  was  a  good  deal  of  mere  acting  in  the  grief,  for  the 
tribes  had  never  occupied  the  land  that  they  now  sold. 

The  next  day  Dr.  Featherston  drove  into  camp,  surrounded 
by  a  brilliant  cavalcade  of  Maori  cavalry,  amid  much  yelling 
and  firing  of  pieces  skyward.     Ilunia,  in  receiving  him,  dc- 


Pare  wan  ui   Pah.  263 

dared  that  he  would  not  have  the  money  paid  till  the  morrow, 
;;s  the  sun  must  shine  upon  the  transfer  of  the  lands.  It 
would  take  his  people  all  the  night,  he  said  to  work  themselves 
up  to  the  right  pitch  for  a  war-dance ;  so  he  sent  down  a 
strong  guard  to  watch  the  money-chests,  which  had  been  con- 
voyed to  the  missionary  hut.  The  Ngatiapa  sentry  posted 
inside  the  room  was  an  odd  cross  between  savagery  and  civil- 
ization ;  he  wore  the  cap  of  the  native  contingent,  and  noth- 
ing else  but  a  red  kilt.  He  was  armed  with  a  short  Wilkin- 
son rifle,  for  which  he  had,  however,  not  a  round  of  ammuni- 
tion, his  cartridges  being  Enfield,  and  his  piece  unloaded. 
Barbarian  or  not,  he  seemed  to  like  raw  gin,  with  which  some 
Englishman  had  unlawfully  and  unfairly  tempted  him. 

In  the  morning  the  money  was  handed  over  in  the  runan- 
ga-house,  and  a  signet-ring  presented  to  Hunia  by  Dr.  Feath- 
crston  in  pledge  of  peace,  and  memory  of  the  sale  ;  but,  owing 
to  the  heat,  we  soon  adjourned  to  the  karaka  grove,  where 
Hunia  made  a  congratulatory  and  somewhat  boastful  speech, 
offering  his  friendship  and  alliance  to  Dr.  Featherston. 

The  assembly  was  soon  dismissed,  and  the  chiefs  withdrew 
to  prepare  for  the  grandest  war-dance  that  had  been  seen  for 
years,  while  a  party  went  off  to  catch  and  kill  the  oxen  that 
were  to  be  "steamed"  whole,  just  as  our  friends'  fathers 
would  have  steamed  us. 

A  chief  was  detached  by  Hunia  to  guide  us  to  a  hill  whence 
we  commanded  the  whole  glade.  No  sooner  had  we  taken 
our  seats  than  the  Ngatiraukawa  to  the  number  of  a  hundred 
fighting-men,  armed  with  spears,  and  led  by  a  dozen  women 
bearing  clubs,  marched  out  from  their  camp,  and  formed  in 
column,  their  chiefs  making  speeches  of  exhortation  from  the 
ranks.  After  a  pause,  we  heard  the  measured  groaning  of  a 
distant  haka,  and,  looking  up  the  glade,  at  the-  distance  of  a 
mile  saw  some  two-score  Wanganui  warriors  jumping  in  per- 
fect time,  now  to  one  side,  now  to  the  other,  grasping  their 
rifles  by  the  barrel,  and  raising  them  as  one  man  each  time 
they  jumped.  Presently,  bending  one  knee,  but  stiffening  the 
other  leg,  they  advanced,  stepping  together  with  a  hopping 
movement,  slapping  their  hips  and  thighs,  and  shouting  from 
the  palate  "  Hough  !  Hough  !"  with  fearful  emphasis. 

A  shout  from  the  Ngatiraukawa  hailed  the  approach  of  the 


261  Greater  Britain. 

Ngatiapa,  who  deployed  from  the  woods  some  two  hundred 
strong,  all  armed  with  Enfield  rifles.  They  united  with  the 
Wanganuis,  and  marched  slowly  down  with  their  rifles  at  the 
"  charge,"  steadily  singing  war-songs,  "When  within  a  hun- 
dred yards  of  the  opposing  rank,  they  halted,  and  sent  in  their 
challenge.  The  Ngatiraukawa  and  Ngatiapa  heralds  passed 
each  other  in  silence,  and  each  delivered  his  message  to  the 
hostile  chief. 

We  could  see  that  the  allies  were  led  by  Ilunia  in  all  the 
bravery  of  his  war  costume.  In  his  hair  he  wore  a  heron 
plume,  and  another  was  fastened  near  the  muzzle  of  his  short 
carbine :  his  limbs  were  bare,  but  about  his  shoulders  lie  had 
a  pure  white  scarf  of  satin.  His  kilt  was  gauze  silk,  of  three 
colors — pink,  emerald,  and  cherry — arranged  in  such  a  way  as 
to  show  as  much  of  the  green  as  of  the  two  other  colors.  The 
contrast,  which  upon  a  white  skin  would  have  been  glaring  in 
its  ugliness,  was  perfect  when  backed  by  the  nut-brown  of 
Hunia's  chest  and  legs.  As  he  ran  before  his  tribe,  he  was 
the  ideal  savage. 

The  instant  that  the  heralds  had  returned,  a  charge  took 
place,  the  forces  passing  through  each  other's  ranks  as  they 
do  upon  the  stage,  but  with  frightful  yells.  After  this,  they 
formed  two  deep,  in  three  companies,  and  danced  the  "  mus- 
ket-exercise war-dance  "  in  wonderful  time,  the  women  lead- 
ing, thrusting  out  their  tongues,  and  shaking  their  long,  pend- 
ent breasts.  Among  them  was  Hamuera's  wife,  standing 
drawn  up  to  her  full  height,  her  limbs  stiffened,  her  head 
thrown  back,  her  mouth  wide  open,  and  tongue  protruding, 
her  eyes  rolled  so  as  to  show  the  white,  and  her  arms  stretch- 
ed out  in  front  of  her,  as  she  slowly  chanted.  The  illusion 
was  perfect :  she  became  for  the  time  a  mad  prophetess ;  yet 
all  the  frenzy  was  assumed  at  a  whim,  to  be  cast  aside  in  half 
an  hour;  The  shouts  were  of  the  same  undcr-breath  kind  as 
in  the  haka,  but  they  were  aided  by  the  sounds  of  horns  and 
conch-shells,  and,  from  the  number  of  men  engaged,  the  noise 
was  this  time  terrible.  After  much  fierce  singing,  the  mus- 
ket-dance was  repeated,  with  furious  leaps  and  gestures,  till  the 
men  became  utterly  exhausted,  when  the  review  was  closed  by 
a  general  discharge  of  rifles.  Running  with  nimble  feet,  the 
dancers  wei'e  soon  back  within  their  pahs,  and  the  feast  be 


Parewanui   Fail  265 

ginning  now,  was,  like  a  Russian  banquet,  prolonged  till  morn- 
ing. 

It  is  not  bard  to  understand  the  conduct  of  Lord  Durham's 
settlers,  who  landed  here  in  1837.  The  friendly  natives  re- 
ceived the  party  with  a  war-dance,  which  had  upon  them  such 
an  effect  that  they  immediately  took  ship  for  Australia,  where 
they  remained. 

The  next  day,  when  we  called  on  Governor  Hunia  at  his 
wahre  to  bid  him  farewell  before  our  departure  for  the  capi- 
tal, he  made  two  speeches  to  us,  which  are  worth  recording, 
as  specimens  of  Maori  oratory.  Speaking  through  Mr.  Buller, 
who  had  been  kind  enough  to  escort  us  to  the  Ngatiapa's 
wahre,  Hunia  said : 

"  Hail,  guests  !  You  have  just  now  seen  the  settlement  of 
a  great  dispute — the  greatest  of  modern  time. 

"  This  was  a  weighty  trouble — a  grave  difficulty. 

"  Many  Pakehas  have  tried  to  settle  it  in  vain.  For  Peta- 
tone was  it  reserved  to  end  it.  I  have  said  that  great  is  our 
gratitude  to  Petatone. 

"  If  Petatone  hath  need  of  me  in  the  future,  I  shall  be  there. 
If  he  climbs  the  lofty  tree,  I  will  climb  it  Avith  him.  If  he 
scales  high  cliffs,  I  will  scale  them  too.  If  Petatone  needeth 
help,  he  shall  have  it ;  and  where  he  leads,  there  will  I  follow. 

"  Such  are  the  words  of  Hunia." 

To  this  speech  one  of  us  replied,  explaining  our  position  as 
guests  from  Britain. 

Hunia  then  began  again  to  speak : 

"  O  my  guests,  a  few  days  since,  when  asked  for  a  war- 
dance,  I  refused.  I  refused,  because  my  people  were  sad  at 
heart. 

"  We  were  loth  to  refuse  our  guests,  but  the  tribes  were 
grieved ;  the  people  were  sorrowful  at  heart. 

"  To-day  we  are  happy,  and  the  war-dance  has  taken  place. 

"  O  my  guests,  when  ye  return  to  our  great  queen,  tell  her 
that  we  will  fight  for  her  again  as  we  have  fought  before. 

"  She  is  our  queen  as  well  as  your  queen — Queen  of  Maories, 
Queen  of  Pakeha. 

"  Should  wars  arise,  we  will  take  up  our  rifles,  and  march 
whithersoever  she  shall  direct. 

"  You  have  heard  of  the  King  movement.    I  was  a  Kingitc ; 

M 


2t>t>  Greater  Britain. 

but  that  did  not  prevent  me  fighting  for  the  queen — I  and  my 
chiefs. 

"  My  cousin,  Wiremu,  went  to  England,  and  saw  our  queen. 
He  returned. . . . 

"  When  you  landed  in  this  island,  he  was  already  dead. . . . 

"  He  died  fighting  for  our  queen. 

"As  he  died,  %oe  will  die,  if  need  he — I  and  all  ray  chiefs. 
This  do  you  tell  our  queen. 

"  I  have  said." 

This  passage,  spoken  as  Hunia  spoke  it,  was  one  of  noble 
eloquence  and  singular  rhetoric  art.  The  few  first  words 
about  Wiremu  were  spoken  in  a  half -indifferent  way;  but 
there  was  a  long  pause  before  and  after  the  statement  that  he 
was  dead,  and  a  sinking  of  the  voice  when  he  related  how 
Wiremu  had  died,  followed  by  a  burst  of  sudden  fire  in  the 
"  As  he  died,  we  will  die — I  and  all  my  chiefs." 

After  a  minute  or  two,  Hunia  resui      1  : 

"  This  is  another  word. 

"  We  are  all  of  us  glad  to  see  you. 

"  When  we  wrote  to  Petatone,  we  asked  him  that  he  would 
bring  with  him  Pakehas  from  England  and  from  Australia — 
Pakehas  from  all  parts  of  the  queen's  broad  lands. 

"  Pakehas  who  should  return  to  tell  the  queen  that  the  Nga- 
tiapa  are  her  liegemen. 

"We  are  much  rejoiced  that  you  are  here.  May  your 
heart  rest  here  among  us;  but  if  you  go  once  more  to  your 
English  home,  tell  the  people  that  we  are  Petatone's  faithful 
subjects  and  the  queen's. 

"  I  have  said." 

After  pledging  Hunia  in  a  cup  of  wine,  we  returned  to  our 
temporary  home. 


CHAPTER    V. 

THE   MAOEIES. 


Pasting  with  my  companions  (who  were  going  north- 
ward), in  order  that  I  might  return  to  Wellington  and  thence 
take  ship  to  Taranaki,  I  started  at  daybreak  on  a  lovely  morn- 
ing to  walk  by  the  sea-shore  to  Otaki.     As  I  left  the  bank  of 


The  Maoiues.  267 

the  Manawatu  River  for  the  sands,  Mount  Egmont,  near  Tara- 
naki,  and  Mounts  Ruapehu  and  Tongariro,  in  the  centre  of 
the  island,  hung  their  great  snow-domes  in  the  soft  blue  of  the 
sky  behind  me,  and  seemed  to  have  parted  from  their  bases. 

I  soon  passed  through  the  flax-swamp  where  avc  for  days 
had  shot  the  pukeko,  and  coming  out  upon  the  wet  sands, 
which  here  are  glittering  and  full  of  the  Taranaki  steel,  I  took 
off  boots  and  socks,  and  trudged  the  whole  distance  barefoot, 
regardless  of  the  morrow.  It  was  hard  to  walk  without 
crunching  with  the  heel  shells  which  would  be  thought  rare  at 
home,  and  here  and  there  charming  little  tern  and  other  tiny 
sea-fowl  flew  at  me,  and  all  but  pecked  my  eyes  out  for  com- 
ing near  their  nests. 

During  the  day  I  forded  two  large  rivers  and  small  streams 
innumerable,  and  swam  the  Ohau,  where  Dr.  Featherston  last 
week  lost  his  dog-cart  in  the  quicksands,  but  I  managed  to 
reach  Otaki  before  sunset,  in  time  to  revel  in  a  typical  New 
Zealand  view.  The  foreground  was  composed  of  ancient 
sand-hills,  covered  with  the  native  flax,  with  the  deliciously- 
scented  Manuka  ti-tree,  brilliant  in  white  flower,  and  with 
giant  fern,  tuft-grass,  and  tussac.  Farther  inland  was  the 
bush,  evergreen,  bunch-like  in  its  foliage,  and  so  overladen 
with  parasitic  vegetation  that  the  true  leaves  were  hidden  by 
usurpers,  or  crushed  to  death  in  the  folds  of  snake-like  creep- 
ers. The  view  was  bounded  by  bushrclad  mountains,  rosy 
with  the  sunset  tints. 

Otaki  is  Archdeacon  Hadfield's  church  settlement  of  Chris- 
tian Maories ;  but  of  late  there  have  been  signs  of  wavering 
in  the  tribes,  and  I  found  Major  Edwardes,  who  had  been  with 
us  at  Parewamxi,  engaged  in  holding,  for  the  Government,  a 
runanga  of  Hau-haus,  or  anti-Christian  Maories,  in  the  Otaki 
Pah.  Some  of  these  fellows  had  lately  held  a  meeting,  and 
had  themselves  re-baptized,  but  this  time  out  of,  instead  of 
into,  the  Church.  They  received  fresh  names,  and  are  said  to 
have  politely  invited  the  archdeacon  to  perform  the  ceremony. 

Maori  Church  of  Englandism  has  proved  a  failure.  A 
dozen  native  clergymen  are,  it  is  true,  supported  in  comfort 
by  their  countrymen,  but  the  tribes  would  support  a  hundred 
such,  if  necessary,  rather  than  give  up  the  fertile  "reserva- 
tions," such  as  that  of  Otaki,  which  their  pretended  Christian- 


268  Greater  Britain. 

ity  has  secured.  There  is  much  in  the  Maori  that  is  tiger- 
like, and  it  is  in  the  blood,  not  to  be  drawn  out  of  it  by  a  few 
years  of  playing  at  Christianity. 

The  labors  of  the  missionaries  have  been  great,  their  earn- 
estness and  devotion  unsurpassed.  Up  to  the  day  of  the  out- 
break of  Hau-hauism,  their  influence  with  the  natives  was 
thought  to  be  enormous.  The  entire  Maori  race  had  been  bap- 
tized, thoiisands  of  natives  had  attended  the  schools,  hundreds 
had  become  communicants  and  catechists.  In  a  day  the  num- 
ber of  native  Christians  was  reduced  from  thirty  thousand  to 
some  hundreds.  Right  and  left  the  tribes  flocked  to  the  bush, 
deserting  mission-stations,  villages,  herds,  and  fields.  Those 
few  who  dared  not  go  were  there  in  spirit ;  all  sympathized,  if 
not  with  the  Hau-hau 'movement,  at  least  with  Kingism.  The 
archdeacon  and  his  brethren  of  the  holy  calling  were  at  their 
wits'  ends.  Not  only  did  Christianity  disappear  ;  civilization 
itself  accompanied  religion  in  her  flight,  and  habits  of  blood- 
shed and  barbarity,  unknown  since  the  nominal  renunciation 
of  idolatry,  in  a  day  returned.  The  fall  was  terrible,  but  it 
went  to  show  that  the  apparent  success  had  been  fictitious. 
The  natives  had  built  mills  and  owned  ships  ;  they  had  learn- 
ed  husbandry  and  cattle-breeding ;  they  had  invested  money, 
and  put  acre  to  acre,  and  house  to  house  ;  but  their  moral  could 
hardly  have  kept  pace  with  their  material,  or  even  with  their 
mental  gains. 

A  magistrate  who  knows  the  Maories  well  told  me  that 
their  Christianity  is  only  on  the  sui'face.  He  one  day  asked 
Matene  te  Whiwhi,  a  Ngatiraukawa  chief,  "  Which  would 
you  soonest  eat,  Matene — pork,  beef,  or  Ngatiapa  ?"  Matene 
answered,  with  a  turn-up  of  his  eyes,  "  Ah  !  I'm  a  Christian  !" 
"  Never  mind  that  to  me,  you  know,"  said  the  Englishman. 
"  The  flesh  of  Ngatiapa  is  sweet,"  said  Matene,  with  a  smack 
of  the  lips  that  was  distinctly  audible.  The  settlers  tell  you 
that  when  the  Maories  go  to  war,  they  use  up  their  Bibles  for 
gun-wadding,  and  then  come  on  the  missionaries  for  a  fresh 
supply. 

The  Polynesians,  when  Christianity  is  first  presented  to 
them,  embrace  it  with  excitement  and  enthusiasm ;  the  "  new 
religion"  spreads  like  wildfire;  the  success  of  the  teachers  is 
amazing.      A   few  years,  however,  show  a  terrible  change. 


The  Maories.  269 

The  natives  find  that  all  white  men  are  not  missionaries  ;  that 
if  one  set  of  Englishmen  deplore  their  licentiousness,  there  are 
others  to  back  them  in  it ;  that  Christianity  requires  self-re- 
straint. As  soon  as  the  first  flare  of  the  new  religion  is  over, 
it  commences  to  decline,  and  in  some  cases  it  expires.  The 
story  of  Christianity  in  Hawaii,  in  Otaheitc,  and  in  New  Zea- 
land, has  been  much  the  same :  among  the  Tahitians,  it  was 
crushed  by  the  relapse  of  the  converts  into  extreme  licentious- 
ness; among  the  Maories,  it  was  put  down  by  the  sudden  rise  of 
the  Hau-hau  fanaticism.  A  return  to  a  better  state  of  tilings 
has  in  each  case  followed,  but  the  missionaries  work  now  in  a 
depressed  and  saddened  way,  which  contrasts  sternly  with  the 
exultation  that  inspired  them  before  the  fresh  outbreak  of  the 
demon  which  they  believed  they  had  exorcised.  They  re- 
luctantly admit  that  the  Polynesians  are  fickle  as  Avell  as 
gross ;  not  only  licentious,  but  untrustworthy.  There  is,  they 
will  tell  you,  no  country  where  it  is  so  easy  to  plant  or  so 
hard  to  maintain  Christianity. 

The  Maori  religion  is  that  of  all  the  Polynesians — a  vague 
polytheism,  which  in  their  poems  seems  now  and  then  to  ap- 
proach to  pantheism.  The  forest  glades,  the  mountain  rocks, 
the  stormy  shores,  all  swarm  with  fairy  singers,  and  with 
throngs  of  gnomes  and  elves.  The  happy,  laughing  island- 
ers have  a  heaven,  but  no  hell  in  their  mythology  ;  of  "  sin  " 
they  have  no  conception.  Hau-hauism  is  not  a  Polynesian 
creed,  but  a  political  and  religious  system  based  upon  the 
eai-lier  books  of  the  Old  Testament ;  even  the  cannibalism 
which  was  added  was  not  of  the  Polynesian  kind.  The  In- 
dians of  Chili  ate  human  flesh  for  pleasure  and  variety ;  those 
of  Virginia  were  cannibals  only  on  state  occasions,  or  in  re- 
ligious ceremonials ;  but  the  Maories  seem  originally  to  have 
been  driven  to  man-eating  by  sheer  want  of  food.  Since 
Cook  left  pigs  upon  the  islands,  the  excuse  has  been  wanting, 
and  the  practice  has  consequently  ceased.  As  revived  by  the 
Hau-haus,  the  man-eating  was  of  a  ceremonial  nature,  and, 
like  the  whole  of  the  observances  of  the  Hau-hau  fanaticism, 
an  inroad  upon  ancient  Maori  customs. 

There  is  one  great  difference  which  severs  the  Maories 
from  the  other  Polynesians.  In  New  Zealand  caste  is  un- 
known ;  every  Maori  is  a  gentleman  or  a  slave.     Chiefs  are 


270  Greater  Britain. 

elected  by  the  popular  voice,  not,  indeed,  by  a  show  of  hands, 
but  by  a  sort  of  general  agreement  of  the  tribe  ;  but  the  chief 
is  a  political,  not  a  social  superior.  In  the  windy  climate  of 
New  Zealand,  men  can  push  themselves  to  the  front  too  sure- 
ly by  their  energy  and  toil,  to  remain  socially  in  an  inferior 
class.  Caste  is  impossible  where  the  climate  necessitates 
activity  and  work.  The  Maories,  too,  we  should  remember, 
are  an  immigrant  race ;  probably  no  high-ca^tc  men  came 
with  them — all  started  from  equal  rank. 

Like  the  Tongans,  the  Maories  pay  great  reverence  to  their 
well  -  born  women  ;  slave  -  women  are  of  no  account.  The 
Friendly  Islanders  exclude  both  man  and  woman  slave  from 
the  future  life  ;  but  the  Maori  Rangatira  not  only  admits  his 
followers  to  heaven,  but  his  wife  to  council.  A  Maori  chief 
is  as  obedient  to  the  warlike  biddings,  and  as  grateful  for  the 
praising  glance  or  smile  of  his  betrothed,  as  a  planter-cavalier 
of  Carolina  or  a  Cretan  volunteer ;  and  even  the  ladies  of 
New  Orleans  can  not  have  gone  farther  than  the  wives  of 
Hunia  and  Ihakara  in  spurring  on  the  men  to  war.  The 
Maori  Andromaches  outdo  their  European  sisters,  for  they 
themselves  proceed  to  battle,  and  animate  their  Hectors  by 
songs  and  shouts.  Even  the  sceptre  of  tribal  rule — the  green- 
stone meri,  or  royal  club — is  often  intrusted  them  by  their  war- 
rior husbands,  and  used  to  lead  the  war-dance  or  the  charge. 

The  delicacy  of  treatment  shown  by  the  Maories  toward 
their  women  may  go  far  to  account  for  the  absence  of  con- 
tempt for  the  native  race  among  the  English  population.  An 
Englishman's  respect  for  the  sex  is  terribly  shocked  when 
he  sees  a  woman  staggering  under  the  Aveight  of  the  wigwam 
and  the  children  of  a  "  brave,"  who  stalks  behind  her  through 
the  streets  of  Austin,  carrying  his  rifles  and  his  pistols,  but 
not  another  ounce,  unless  in  the  shape  of  a  thong  with  which 
to  hasten  the  squaw's  steps.  What  wonder  if  the  men  who 
sit  by  smoking  while  their  wives  totter  under  basketsful  of 
mould  on  the  boulevard  works  at  Delhi  are  called  lazy  scoun- 
drels by  the  press  of  the  North  -  west,  or  if  the  Shoshones, 
who  eat  the  bread  of  idleness  themselves,  and  hire  out  their 
wives  to  the  Pacific  Railroad  Company,  are  looked  upon  as 
worse  than  dogs  in  Nevada,  where  the  thing  is  done  ?  It  is 
the  New  Zealand  native's  treatment  of  his  wife  that  makes  it 


The  Maories.  271 

possible  for  an  honest  Englishman  to  respect  or  love  an  hon- 
est Maori. 

In  general,  the  newspaper  editors  and  idle  talkers  of  the 
frontier  districts  of  a  colony  in  savage  lands  speak  with  min- 
gled ridicule  and  contempt  of  the  men  with  whom  they  daily 
struggle ;  at  best,  they  see  in  them  no  virtue  but  ferocious 
bravery.  The  Kansas  and  Colorado  papers  call  Indians 
"fiends,"  "devils,"  or  dismiss  them  laughingly  in  peaceful 
times  as  "  bucks,"  whose  lives  are  worth,  perhaps,  a  buffalo's, 
but  who  are  worthy  of  notice  only  as  potential  murderers  or 
thieves.  Such,  too,  is  the  tone  of  the  Australian  press  con- 
cerning the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  Queensland  or  Tasmania. 
Far  otherwise  do  the  New  Zealand  papers  speak  of  the  Maori 
warriors.  They  may  sometimes  call  them  grasping,  over- 
reaching traders,  or  underrate  their  capability  of  receiving 
civilization  of  a  European  kind,  but  never  do  they  affect  to 
think  them  less  than  men,  or  to  advocate  the  employment 
toward  them  of  measures  which  would  be  repressed  as  infa- 
mous if  applied  to  brutes.  We  should,  I  think,  see  in  this 
peculiarity  of  conduct,  not  evidence  of  the  existence  in  New 
Zealand  of  a  spirit  more  catholic  and  tolerant  toward  savage 
neighbors  than  that  which  the  English  race  displays  in  Aus- 
tralia or  America,  but  rather  a  tribute  to  the  superiority  in 
virtue,  intelligence,  and  nobility  of  mind  possessed  by  the 
Maori  over  the  Red  Indian  or  the  Australian  black. 

It  is  not  only  in  their  treatment  of  their  women  that  the 
Maories  show  their  chivalry.  One  of  the  most  noble  traits  of 
this  great  people  is  their  habit  of  "  proclaiming  "  the  districts 
in  which  lies  the  cause  of  war  as  the  sole  fighting-ground, 
and  never  touching  their  enemies,  however  defenseless,  when 
found  elseAvhere.  European  nations  might  take  a  lesson  from 
New  Zealand  Maories  in  this  and  other  points. 

The  Maories  are  apt  at  learning,  merry,  and,  unlike  other 
Polynesians,  trustworthy,  but  also,  unlike  them,  mercenary. 
At  the  time  of  the  Manawatu  sale,  old  Aperahama  used  to 
write  to  Dr.  Featherston  almost  every  day :  "  O  Petatone,  let 
the  price  of  the  block  be  £9,999,999  19s.  9 <r?.,"  the  mysteries 
of  eleven  pence  three-farthings  being  far  beyond  his  compre- 
hension. The  Maories  have,  too,  a  royal  magnificence  in  their 
ideas  of  gifts  and  grants — witness  Te  Heke's  bid  of  100,000 


272  Greater  Britain. 

acres  of  land  for  Governor  Fitzroy's  head,  in  answer  to  the 
offer  by  the  governor  of  a  small  price  for  bis. 

The  praises  of  the  Maories  have  been  sung  by  so  many 
writers,  and  in  so  many  keys,  that  it  is  necessary  to  keep  it 
distinctly  before  us  that  they  are  mere  savages,  though  brave, 
shrewd  men.  There  is  an  Eastern  civilization — that  of  China 
and  Hindostan — distinct  from  that  of  Europe,  and  ancient  be- 
yond all  count ;  in  this  the  Maories  have  no  share.  No  true 
Hindoo,  no  Arab,  no  Chinaman  has  suffered  change  in  one 
tittle  of  his  dress  or  manners  from  contact  with  the  Western 
races  ;  of  this  essential  conservatism  there  is  in  the  New  Zea- 
land savage  not  a  trace.  William  Thompson,  the  Maori 
"  king-maker,"  used  to  dress  as  any  Englishman ;  Maories  on 
board  our  ships  wear  the  uniform  of  the  able-bodied  seaman ; 
Governor  Hunia  has  ridden  as  a  gentleman-rider  in  a  steeple- 
chase, equipped  in  jockey  dress. 

Savages  though  they  be,  in  irregular  warfare  we  are  not 
their  match.  At  the  end  of  1865  we  had,  of  regulars  and  mi- 
litia, seventeen  thousand  men  under  arms  in  the  North  Island 
of  New  Zealand,  including  no  less  than  twelve  regiments  of 
the  line  at  their  "  war  strength,"  and  yet  our  generals  were 
despondent  as  to  their  chance  of  finally  defeating  the  warriors 
of  a  people  which — men,  women,  and  children — numbered  but 
thirty  thousand  souls. 

Men  have  sought  far  and  wide  for  the  reasons  which  led 
to  our  defeats  in  the  New  Zealand  wars.  We  were  defeated 
by  the  Maories,  as  the  Austrians  by  the  Prussians,  and  the 
French  by  the  English  in  old  times,  because  the  victors  were 
the  better  men.  Not  the  braver  men,  when  both  sides  were 
brave  alike ;  not  the  stronger ;  not,  perhaps,  taking  the  aver- 
age of  our  officers  and  men,  the  more  intelligent ;  but  capable 
of  quicker  movement,  able  to  subsist  on  less,  more  crafty, 
more  skilled  in  the  thousand  tactics  of  the  bush.  Aided  by 
their  women,  who,  when  need  was,  themselves  would  lead  the 
charge,  and  who  at  all  times  dug  their  fern-root  and  caught 
their  fish  ;  marching  where  our  regiments  could  not  follow, 
they  had,  as  have  the  Indians  in  America,  the  choice  of  time 
and  place  for  their  attacks  ;  and  while  wo  were  crawling  about 
our  military  roads  upon  the  coast,  incapable  of  traversing  a 
mile  of  bush,  the  Maories  moved  securely  and  secretly  from 


The  Two  Flies.  273 

one  end  to  the  other  of  the  island.  Arras  they  had,  ammu- 
nition they  could  steal,  and  blockade  was  useless  with  enemies 
who  live  on  feni-root.  "When  they  found  that  we  burned 
their  pahs,  they  ceased  to  build  them ;  that  was  all.  When 
we  brought  up  howitzers,  they  went  where  no  howitzers  could 
follow.  It  should  not  be  hard  even  for  our  pride  to  allow 
that  such  enemies  were,  man  for  man,  in  their  own  lands  our 
betters. 

All  nations  fond  of  horses,  it  has  been  said,  flourish  and 
succeed.  The  Maories  love  horses,  nnd  ride  well.  All  races 
that  delight  in  sea  are  equally  certain  to  prosper,  empirical 
philosophers  will  tell  us.  The  Maories  own  ships  by  the  score, 
and  serve  as  sailors  whenever  they  get  a  chance :  as  deep-sea 
fishermen,  they  have  no  equals.  Their  fondness  for  draughts 
shows  mathematical  capacity ;  in  truthfulness,  they  possess 
the  first  of  virtues.  They  are  shrewd,  thrifty ;  devoted  friends, 
brave  men.     With  all  this,  they  die. 

"  Can  you  stay  the  surf  which  beats  on  Wanganui  shore  ?" 
say  the  Maories  of  our  progress  ;  and  of  themselves, "  We  are 
gone — like  the  ?no«." 


CHAPTER  VI. 

TIIE     TWO     FLIES. 

"  As  the  Pakeha  fly  has  driven  out  the  Maori  fly ; 
As  the  Pake'ha  grass  has  killed  the  Maori  grass ; 
As  the  Pakeha  rat  has  slain  the  Maori  rat ; 
As  the  Pakeha  clover  has  starved  the  Maori  fern, 
So  will  the  Pake'ha  destroy  the  Maori." 

These  are  the  mournful  words  of  a  well-known  Maori 
song. 

That  the  English  daisy,  the  white  clover,  the  common  this- 
tle, the  camomile,  the  oat,  should  make  their  way  rapidly  in 
New  Zealand  and  put  down  the  native  plants,  is  in  no  way 
strange.  If  the  Maori  grasses  that  have  till  lately  held  undis- 
turbed possession  of  the  New  Zealand  soil,  require  for  their 
nourishment  the  substances  A,  B,  and  C,  while  the  English 
clover  needs  A,  B,  and  D,  from  the  nature  of  things,  A  and  B 
will  be  the  coarser  earths  or  salts,  existing  in  larger  quanti- 

M  2 


274  Greater  Britain. 

ties,  not  easily  losing  vigor  and  nourishing  force,  and  recruit- 
ing their  energies  from  the  decay  of  the  very  plant  that  feeds 
on  them ;  but  C  and  D  will  be  the  more  ethereal,  the  more 
easily  destroyed  or  -wasted  substances.  The  Maori  grass, 
having  sucked  nearly  the  whole  of  C  from  the  soil,  is  in  a 
weakly  state,  when  in  comes  the  English  plant,  and,  finding 
an  abundant  store  of  untouched  D,  thrives  accordingly,  aud 
crushes  down  the  Maori. 

The  positions  of  flies  and  grasses,  of  plants  and  insects,  are, 
however,  not  the  same.  Adapted  by  nature  to  the  infinite  va- 
riety of  soils  and  climates,  there  are  an  infinite  number  of*  dif- 
ferent plants  and  animals ;  but  whereas  the  plant  depends  upon 
both  soil  and  climate,  the  animal  depends  chiefly  upon  climate, 
and  little  upon  soil,  except  so  far  as  his  home  or  his  food 
themselves  depend  on  soil.  Now,  while  soil  wears  out,  climate 
docs  not.  The  climate  in  the  long  run  remains  the  same,  but 
certain  apparently  trifling  constituents  of  the  soil  will  wholly 
disappear.  The  result  of  this  is,  that  while  pigs  may  continue 
to  thrive  in  New  Zealand  forever  and  a  day,  Dutch  clover 
(without  manure)  will  only  last  a  given  and  calculable  time. 

The  case  of  the  flies  is  plain  enough.  The  Maori  and  the 
English  fly  live  on  the  same  food,  and  require  about  the  same 
amount  of  warmth  and  moisture :  the  one  which  is  best  fitted 
to  the  common  conditions  will  gain  the  day,  and  drive  out  the 
other.  The  English  fly  has  had  to  contend  not  only  against 
other  English  flies,  but  against  every  fly  of  temperate  cli- 
mates :  we  having  traded  with  every  land,  and  brought  the 
flies  of  every  clime  to  England.  The  English  fly  is  the  best 
possible  fly  of  the  whole  world,  and  will  naturally  beat  down 
and  exterminate,  or  else  starve  out,  the  merely  provincial  Ma- 
ori fly.  If  a  great  singer — to  find  whom  for  the  London 
stage  the  world  has  been  ransacked — should  be  led  by  the 
foible  of  the  moment  to  sing  for  gain  in  an  unknown  village 
where,  on  the  same  night,  a  rustic  tenor  Avas  attempting  to 
sing  his  best,  the  London  tenor  would  send  the  provincial 
supperless  to  bed.     So  it  is  with  the  English  and  Maori  fly. 

Natural  selection  is  being  conducted  by  nature  in  New 
Zealand  on  a  grander  scale  than  any  we  have  contemplated, 
for  the  object  of  it  here  is  man.  In  America, in  Australia, 
the  white  man  shoots  or  poisons  his  red  or  black  fellow,  and 


The  Two  Flies.  275 

exterminates  him  through  the  workings  of  superior  knowl- 
edge ;  but  in  New  Zealand  it  is  peacefully,  and  without  extra- 
ordinary advantages,  that  the  Pakeha  beats  his  Maori  brother. 

That  which  is  true  of  our  animal  and  vegetable  produc- 
tions is  true  also  of  our  man.  The  English  fly,  grass,  and 
man,  they  and  their  progenitors  before  them,  have  had  to  fight 
for  life  against  their  fellows.  The  Englishman,  bringing  into 
his  country  froni  the  parts  to  which  he  trades  all  manner  of 
men,  of  grass  seeds,  and  of  insect  germs,  has  filled  his  land 
with  every  kind  of  living  thing  to  which  his  soil  or  climate 
will  afford  support.  Both  old  inhabitants  and  interlopers 
have  to  maintain  a  struggle  which  at  once  crushes  and  starves 
out  of  life  every  weakly  plant,  man,  or  insect,  and  fortifies  the 
race  by  continual  bufferings.  The  plants  of  civilized  man  are 
generally  those  which  will  grow  best  in  the  greatest  variety 
of  soils  and  climates ;  but  in  any  case  the  English  fauna  and 
flora  are  peculiarly  fitted  to  succeed  at  our  antipodes,  because 
the  climates  of  Great  Britain  and  New  Zealand  are  almost 
the  same,  and  our  men,  flies,  and  plants — the  "  pick  "  of  the 
whole  world — have  not  even  to  encounter  the  difficulties  of 
acclimatization  in  their  struggle  against  the  weaker  growths 
indigenous  to  the  soil. 

Nature's  work  in  New  Zealand  is  not  the  same  as  that 
which  she  is  quickly  doing  in  North  America,  in  Tasmania,  in 
Queensland.  It  is  not  merely  that  a  hunting  and  fighting 
people  is  being  replaced  by  an  agricultural  and  pastoral  peo- 
ple, and  must  farm  or  die :  the  Maori  does  farm ;  Maori  chiefs 
own  villages,  build  houses,  which  they  let  to  European  set- 
tlers ;  we  have  here  Maori  sheep-farmers,  Maori  ship-owners, 
Maori  mechanics,  Maori  soldiers,  Maori  rough-riders,  Maori 
sailors,  and  even  Maori  traders.  There  is  nothing  which  the 
average  Englishman  can  do  which  the  average  Maori  can  not 
be  taught  to  do  as  cheaply  and  as  well.  Nevertheless,  the 
race  dies  out.  The  Red  Indian  dies  because  he  can  not  farm ; 
the  Maori  farms,  and  dies. 

There  are  certain  special  features  about  the  advance  of  the 
birds,  beasts,  and  men  of  Western  civilization.  When  the 
first  white  man  landed  in  New  Zealand,  all  the  native  quad- 
rupeds save  one,  and  nearly  all  the  birds  and  river-fishes  were 
extinct,  though  we  have  their  bones,  and  traditions  of  their 


276  Greater  Britain. 

existence.  The  Maories  themselves  were  dying  out.  The 
moa  and  dinoris  were  both  gone ;  there  were  few  insects,  and 
no  reptiles.  "  The  birds  die  because  the  Maories,  their  com- 
panions, die,"  is  the  native  saying.  Yet  the  climate  is  sin- 
gularly good,  and  food  for  beast  and  bird  so  plentiful  that  Cap- 
tain Cook's  pigs  have  planted  colonies  of  "  wild  boars  "  in 
every  part  of  the  islands,  and  English  pheasants  have  no  soon- 
er been  imported  than  they  have  commenced  to  swarm  in 
every  jungle.  Even  the  Pakeha  flea  has  come  over  in  the 
ships,  and  wonderfully  has  he  thriven. 

The  terrible  want  of  food  for  men  that  formerly  character- 
ized New  Zealand  has  had  its  effects  upon  the  habits  of  the 
Maori  race.  Australia  has  no  native  fruit-trees  worthy  culti- 
vation, although  in  the  whole  world  there  is  no  such  climate 
and  soil  for  fruits ;  still,  Australia  has  kangaroos  and  other 
quadrupeds.  The  Ladrones  were  destitute  of  quadrupeds, 
and  of  birds,  except  the  turtle-dove,  but  in  the  warm  damp  cli- 
mate fruits  grew,  sufficient  to  support  in  comfort  a  dense  pop- 
ulation. In  New  Zealand  the  windy  cold  of  the  winters  causes 
a  need  for  something  of  a  tougher  fibre  than  the  banana  or  the 
fern-root.  There  being  no  native  beasts,  the  want  was  sup- 
plied by  human  flesh,  and  war,  furnishing  at  once  food  and 
the  excitement  which  the  chase  supplies  to  peoples  that  have 
animals  to  hunt,  became  the  occupation  of  the  Maories. 
Hence  in  some  degree  the  depopulation  of  the  land  ;  but  other 
causes  exist,  by  the  side  of  which  cannibalism  is  as  nothing. 

The  British  Government  has  been  less  guilty  than  is  com- 
monly believed  as  regards  the  destruction  of  the  Maories. 
Since  the  original  misdeed  of  the  annexation  of  the  isles,  we 
have  done  the  Maories  no  serious  wrong.  We  recognized  the 
claim  of  a  handful  of  natives  to  the  sod  of  a  country  as  large 
as  Great  Britain,  of  not  one-hundredth  part  of  which  had  they 
ever  made  the  smallest  use  ;  and,  disregarding  the  fact  that 
our  occupation  of  the  coast  was  the  very  event  that  gave  the 
land  its  value,  Ave  have  insisted  on  buying  every  acre  from  the 
tribe.  Allowing  title  by  conquest  to  the  Ngatiraukawa,  as  I 
saw  at  Parewanui  Pah,  we  refuse  to  claim  even  the  lands  we 
conquered  from  the  "  Kingites." 

The  Maories  have  always  been  a  village  people,  tilling  a 
little  land  round  their  pahs,  but  incapable  of  making  any  use 


The  Two  Flies.  277 

of  the  great  pastures  and  wheat  countries  which  they  "  own." 
Had  we  at  first  constituted  native  reserves  on  the  American 
system,  we  might,  without  any  fighting,  and  without  any  more 
rapid  destruction  of  the  natives  than  that  which  is  taking 
place,  have  gradually  cleared  and  brought  into  the  market 
nearly  the  whole  country,  which  now  has  to  be  purchased  at 
enormous  prices,  and  at  the  continual  risk  of  war. 

As  it  is,  the  record  of  our  dealings  with  the  queen's  native 
subjects  in  New  Zealand  has  been  almost  free  from  stain  ;  but 
if  we  have  not  committed  crimes,  Ave  have  certainly  not  failed 
to  blunder :  our  treatment  of  William  Thompson  was  at  the 
best  a  grave  mistake.  If  ever  there  lived  a  patriot,  he  was 
one,  and  through  him  we  might  have  ruled  in  peace  the  Maori 
race.  Instead  of  receiving  the  simplest  courtesy  from  a  peo- 
ple which  in  India  showers  honors  upon  its  puppet-kings  and 
rajahs,  he  underwent  fresh  insults  each  time  that  he  entered 
an  English  town,  or  met  a  white  magistrate  or  subaltern,  and 
he  died  while  I  was  in  the  colonies,  according  to  Pakeha  phy- 
sicians, of  liver  complaint;  according  to  the  Maories,  of  a 
broken  heart. 

At  Parewanui  and  Otaki,  I  remarked  that  the  half-breeds 
are  fine  fellows,  possessed  of  much  of  the  nobility  of  both  the 
ancestral  races,  while  the  women  are  famed  for  grace  and 
loveliness.  In  miscegenation  it  would  have  seemed  that  there 
was  a  chance  for  the  Maori,  who,  if  destined  to  die,  would  at 
least  have  left  many  of  his  best  features  of  body  and  mind  to 
live  in  the  mixed  race,  but  here  comes  in  the  prejudice  of 
blood,  with  which  we  have  already  met  in  the  case  of  the  ne- 
groes and  Chinese.  Morality  has  so  far  gained  ground  as 
greatly  to  check  the  spread  of  permanent  illegitimate  con- 
nections with  native  women,  while  pride  prevents  intermar- 
riage. The  numbers  of  the  half-breeds  are  not  upon  the  in- 
crease :  a  few  fresh  marriages  supply  the  vacancies  that  come 
of  death,  but  there  is  no  progress,  no  sign  of  the  creation  of  a 
vigorous  mixed  race.  There  is  something  more  in  this  than 
foolish  pride,  however ;  there  is  a  secret  at  the  bottom  at  once 
of  the  cessation  of  mixed  marriages  and  of  the  dwindling  of 
the  pure  Maori  race,  and  it  is  the  utter  viciousness  of  the  na- 
tive girls.  The  universal  unchastity  of  the  unmarried  women, 
"  Christian"  as  well  as  heathen,  would  be  sufficient  to  destroy 


278  Greater  Britain. 

a  race  of  gods.  The  story  of  the  Maories  is  that  of  the  Tahi- 
tians,  and  is  written  in  the  decorations  of  every  gate-post  or 
rafter  in  their  pahs. 

We  are  more  distressed  at  the  present  and  future  of  the 
Maories  than  they  are  themselves.  For  all  our  greatness, 
we  pity  not  the  Maories  more  profoundly  than  they  do  us 
when,  ascribing  our  morality  to  calculation,  they  bask  in  the 
sunlight,  and  are  happy  in  their  gracelessness.  After  all,  vir- 
tue and  arithmetic  come  from  one  Greek  root. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE    PACIFIC. 

Closely  resembling  Great  Britain  in  situation,  size,  and 
climate,  New  Zealand  is  often  styled  by  the  colonists  "  The 
Britain  of  the  South,"  and  many  affect  to  believe  that- her  fu- 
ture is  destined  to  be  as  brilliant  as  has  been  the  past  of  her 
mother-country.  With  the  exaggeration  of  phrase  to  which 
the  English  New  Zealanders  are  prone,  they  prophesy  a  mar- 
vellous hereafter  for  the  whole  Pacific,  in  which  New  Zealand, 
as  the  carrying  and  manufacturing  country,  is  to  play  the  fore- 
most part,  the  Australias  following  obediently  in  her  train. 

Even  if  the  differences  of  Separatists,  Provincialists,  and 
Centralists  should  be  healed,  the  future  prosperity  of  New 
Zealand  is  by  no  means  secure.  Her  gold-yield  is  only  about 
a  fifth  of  that  of  California  or  Victoria.  Her  area  is  not  suf- 
ficient to  make  her  powerful  as  an  agricultural  or  pastoral 
country,  unless  she  comes  to  attract  manufactures  and  carry- 
ing-trade from  afar,  and  the  prospect  of  New  Zealand  succeed- 
ing in  this  effort  is  but  small.  Her  rivers  are  almost  useless 
for  manufacturing  purposes,  owing  to  their  floods  ;  the  tim- 
ber-supply of  all  her  forests  is  not  equal  to  that  of  a  single 
county  in  the  State  of  Oregon  ;  her  coal  is  inferior  in  quality 
to  that  of  Vancouver's  Island,  in  quantity  to  that  of  Chili,  in 
both  respects  to  that  of  New  South  Wales.  The  harbors  of 
New  Zealand  are  upon  the  eastern  coasts,  but  the  coal  is 
chiefly  upon  the  other  side,  where  the  river-bars  make  trade 
impossible. 

The  coal  that  has  been  found  at  the  Bay  of  Islands  is  said 


The  Pacific.  270 

to  bo  plentiful,  and  of  good  quality,  and  may  bo  made  largely 
available  for  steamers  on  the  coast;  the  steel-sand  of  Tara- 
nakij  smelted  by  the  use  of  petroleum,  also  found  within 
the  province,  may  become  of  value ;  her  own  wool,  too,  New 
Zealand  will  doubtless  one  day  manufacture  into  cloth  and 
blankets ;  but  these  are  comparatively  trifling  matters :  New 
Zealand  may  become  rich  and  populous  without  being  the 
great  power  of  the  Pacific,  or  even  of  the  South. 

The  climate  of  the  North  Island  is  winterless,  moist,  and 
warm,  and  its  effects  are  already  seen  in  a  certain  want  of  en- 
terprise shown  by  the  Government  and  settlers.  I  remarked 
that  the  mail-steamers  which  leave  Wellington  almost  every 
day  are  invariably  "  detained  for  dispatches  :"  it  looks  as 
though  the  officers  of  the  Colonial  or  Imperial  Government 
commence  to  write  their  letters  only  when  the  hour  for  the 
sailing  of  the  ship  has  come.  An  Englishman  visiting  New 
Zealand  was  asked  in  my  presence  how  long  his  business  at 
Wanganui  would  keep  him  in  the  town.  His  answer  was, 
"In  London  it  would  take  me  half  an  hour;  so  I  suppose 
about  a  week — about  a  week  !" 

In  Java  and  the  other  islands  of  the  Indian  archipelago  we 
find  examples  of  the  effect  of  the  supineness  of  dwellers  in 
the  tropics  upon  the  economic  position  of  their  countries. 
Many  of  the  Indian  isles  possess  both  coal  and  cheap  labor, 
but  have  failed  to  become  manufacturing  communities  on  a 
large  scale  only  because  the  natives  have  not  the  energy  re- 
quisite for  the  direction  of  factories  and  workshops,  while 
European  foremen  have  to  be  paid  enormous  wages,  and,  los- 
ing their  spirit  in  the  damp,  unchanging  climate  of  the  islands, 
soon  become  more  indolent  than  the  natives. 

The  position  of  the  various  stores  of  coal  in  the  Pacific  is 
of  extreme  importance  as  an  index  to  the  future  distribution 
of  power  in  that  portion  of  the  world ;  but  it  is  not  enough  to 
know  where  coal  is  to  be  found  without  looking  also  to  the 
quantity,  quality,  cheapness  of  labor,  and  facility  for  trans- 
port. In  China  (in  the  Si  Shan  district)  and  in  Borneo  there 
are  extensive  coal-fields,  but  they  lie  "  the  wrong  way  "  for 
trade.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Californian  coal  —  at  Monte 
Diablo,  San  Diego,  and  Monterey  —  lies  well,  but  is  bad  in 
quality.      The  Talcahuano  bed  in  Chili  is  not  good  enough 


2S0  Greater  Britain. 

for  ocean  steamers,  but  might  be  made  use  of  for  manu- 
factures, although  Chili  has  but  little  iron.  Tasmania  has 
good  coal,  but  in  no  great  quantity,  and  the  beds  nearest  to 
the  coast  are  formed  of  inferior  anthracite.  The  three  coun- 
tries of  the  Pacific  which  must,  for  a  time  at  least,  rise  to 
manufacturing  greatness,  are  Japan,  Vancouver's  Island,  and 
New  South  Wales ;  but  which  of  these  will  become  wealthiest 
and  most  powerful,  depends  mainly  on  the  amount  of  coal 
which  they  respectively  possess  so  situated  as  to  be  cheaply 
raised.  The  dearness  of  labor  under  which  Vancouver  suf- 
fers will  be  removed  by  the  opening  of  the  Pacific  Railroad, 
but  for  the  present  New  South  Wales  has  the  cheaper  labor ; 
and  upon  her  shores  at  Newcastle  are  abundant  stores  of  a 
coal  of  good  quality  for  manufacturing  purposes,  although  for 
sea  use  it  burns  "  dirtily,"  and  too  fast :  the  colony  possesses 
also  ample  beds  of  iron,  copper,  and  lead.  Japan,  as  far  as 
can  be  at  present  seen,  stands  before  Vancouver  and  New 
South  Wales  in  almost  every  point :  she  has  cheap  labor,  good 
climate,  excellent  harbors,  and  abundant  coal ;  cotton  can  be 
grown  upon  her  soil,  and  this  and  that  of  Queensland  she  can 
manufacture  and  export  to  America  and  to  the  East.  Wool 
from  California  and  from  the  Australias  might  be  carried  to 
her  to  be  worked;  and  her  rise  to  commercial  greatness  has 
already  commenced  with  the  passage  of  a  law  allowing  Ja- 
panese workmen  to  take  service  with  European  capitalists  in 
the  "  treaty-ports."  Whether  Japan  or  New  South  Wales  is 
destined  to  become  the  great  wool-manufacturing  country,  it 
is  certain  that  fleeces  will  not  long  continue  to  be  sent  half 
round  the  world — from  Australia  to  England — to  be  worked, 
and  then  round  the  other  half  back  from  England  to  Austra- 
lia, to  be  sold  as  blankets. 

The  future  of  the  Pacific  shores  is  inevitably  brilliant;  but 
it  is  not  New  Zealand,  the  centre  of  the  water-hemisphere, 
Avhich  will  occupy  the  position  that  England  has  taken  in  the 
Atlantic,  but  some  country  such  as  Japan  or  Vancouver,  jut- 
ting out  into  the  ocean  from  Asia  or  from  America,  as  En- 
gland juts  out  from  Europe.  If  New  South  Wales  usurps  the 
position,  it  will  be  not  from  her  geographical  situation,  but 
from  the  manufacturing  advantages  she  gains  by  the  posses- 
sion of  vast  mineral  wealth. 


The  Pacific.  281 

The  power  of  America  is  now  predominant  in  the  Pacific : 
the  Sandwich  Islands  are  all  but  annexed,  Japan  all  but  ruled 
by  her,  while  the  occupation  of  British  Columbia  is  but  a  mat- 
ter of  time,  and  a  Mormon  descent  upon  the  Marquesas  is  al- 
ready planned.  The  relations  of  America  and  Australia  will 
be  the  key  to  the  future  of  the  South  Pacific. 

On  the  26th  of  December  I  left  New  Zealand  for  Aus- 
tralia. 


PART  III.— AUSTRALIA. 


CHAPTER   I. 

SYDNEY. 


At  early  light  on  Christmas  Day,  I  put  off  from  shore  in 
one  of  those  squalls  for  which  Port  Nicholson,  the  harbor  of 
Wellington,  is  famed.  A  boat  which  started  from  the  ship 
at  the  same  time  as  mine  from  the  land  was  upset,  but  in 
such  shallow  water  that  the  passengers  were  saved,  though 
they  lost  a  portion  of  their  baggage.  As  we  flew  toward 
the  mail  steamer,  the  JTaikoura,  the  harbor  was  one  vast 
sheet  of  foam,  and  columns  of  spray  were  being,  whirled  in 
the  air,  and  borne  away  far  inland  on  the  gale.  We  had 
placed  at  the  helm  a  post-office  clerk,  who  said  that  he  could 
steer,  but,  as  Ave  reached  the  steamer's  side,  instead  of  luft- 
ing-up,  he  suddenly  put  the  helm  hard  a-weathcr,  and  we 
shot  astern  of  her,  running  violently  before  the  wind,  al- 
though our  treble-reefed  sail  was  by  this  time  altogether 
down.  A  rope  was  thrown  us  from  a  coal-hulk,  and,  catch- 
ing it,  we  were  soon  on  board,  and  spent  our  Christmas 
walking  up  and  down  her  deck  on  the  slippery  black  dust, 
and  watching  the  effects  of  the  gale.  After  some  hours,  the 
wind  moderated,  and  I  reached  the  Kaikoura  just  before  she 
sailed.  While  Ave  Avere  steaming  out  of  the  harbor  through 
the  boil  of  Avaters  that  marks  the  position  of  the  submarine 
crater,  I  found  that  there  was  but  one  other  passenger  for 
Australia  to  share  with  me  the  services  of  ten  officers  and 
ninety  men,  and  the  accommodations  of  a  ship  of  1500  tons. 
"Serious  preparations  and  a  large  ship  for  a  mere  voyage 
from  one  Australasian  colony  to  another,"  I  felt  inclined  to 
say,  but  during  the  voyage  and  my  first  Aveek  in  New  South 


Sydney.  283 

Wales  I  began  to  discover  that  in  England  we  arc  given 
over  to  a  singular  delusion  as  to  the  connection  of  New  Zea- 
land and  Australia. 

Australasia  is  a  term  much  used  at  home  to  express  the 
whole  of  our  Antipodean  possessions ;  in  the  colonies  them- 
selves, the  name  is  almost  unknown,  or,  if  used,  is  meant  to 
embrace  Australia  and  Tasmania,  not  Australia  and  New 
Zealand.  The  only  reference  to  New  Zealand,  except  in  the 
way  of  foreign  news,  that  I  ever  found  in  an  Australian  pa- 
per, was  a  congratulatory  paragraph  on  the  amount  of  the 
New  Zealand  debt ;  the  only  allusion  to  Australia  that  I 
detected  in  the  Wellington  Independent  was  in  a  glance  at 
the  future  of  the  colony,  in  which  the  editor  predicted  the 
advent  of  a  time  when  New  Zealand  would  be  a  naval  na- 
tion, and  her  fleet  engaged  in  bombarding  Melbourne,  or 
levying  contributions  upon  Sydney. 

New  Zealand,  though  a  change  for  the  better  is  at  hand, 
has  hitherto  been  mainly  an  aristocratic  country  ;  New  South 
Wales  and  Victoria  mainly  democratic.  Had  Australia  and 
New  Zealand  been  close  together,  instead  of  as  far  apart  as 
Africa  and  South  America,  there  could  have  been  no  political 
connection  between  them  so  long  as  the  traditions  of  their  first 
settlement  endured.  Not  only  is  the  name  "Australasia" 
politically  meaningless,  however,  but  it  is  also  geographical- 
ly incorrect,  for  New  Zealand  and  Australia  are  as  comjdete- 
ly  separated  from  each  other  as  Great  Britain  and  Massachu- 
setts. No  promontory  of  Australia  runs  out  to  within  1000 
miles  of  any  New  Zealand  cape ;  the  distance  between  Syd- 
ney and  Wellington  is  1400  miles;  from  Sydney  to  Auckland 
is  as  far.  The  distance  from  the  nearest  point  of  New  Zea- 
land of  Tasman's  Peninsula,  which  itself  projects  somewhat 
from  Tasmania,  is  greater  than  that  of  London  from  Algiers  : 
from  Wellington  to  Sydney,  opposite  ports,  is  as  far  as  from 
Manchester  to  Iceland,  or  from  Africa  to  Brazil. 

The  sea  that  lies  between  the  two  great  countries  of  the 
South  is  not,  like  the  Central  or  North  Pacific,  a  sea  bridged 
with  islands,  ruffled  with  trade-winds,  or  overspread  with  a 
calm  that  permits  the  presence  of  light-draught  paddle  steam- 
ers. The  seas  which  separate  Australia  from  New  Zealand 
are  cold,  bottomless,  without  islands,  torn  by  Arctic  cur- 


284  Greater  Britain. 

rents,  swept  by  polar  gales,  and  traversed  in  all  weathers 
by  a  mountain  swell.  After  the  gale  of  Christmas  Day,  we 
were  blessed  with  a  continuance  of  light  breezes  on  our  way 
to  Sydney,  but  never  did  we  escape  the  long  rolling  hills  of 
seas  that  seemed  to  surge  up  from  the  Antartic  pole :  our 
screw  was  as  often  out  of  as  in  the  water ;  and,  in  a  fast  new 
ship,  we  could  scarcely  average  nine  knots  an  hour  through- 
out the  day.  The  ship  which  had  brought  the  last  Austra- 
lian mail  to  Wellington  before  we  sailed  was  struck  by  a  sea 
which  swept  her  from  stem  to  stern,  and  filled  her  cabins 
two  feet  deep,  and  this  in  December,  which  here  is  midsum- 
mer and  answers  to  our  July.  Not  only  is  the  intervening 
ocean  wide  and  cold,  but  New  Zealand  presents  to  Australia 
a  rugged  coast,  guarded  by  reefs  and  bars  and  backed  by  a 
snowy  range,  while  she  turns  toward  Polynesia  and  America 
all  her  j>orts  and  bays. 

No  two  countries  in  the  world  are  so  wholly  distinct  as 
Australia  and  New  Zealand.  The  islands  of  New  Zealand 
are  inhabited  by  Polynesians,  the  Australian  continent  by 
negroes.  New  Zealand  is  ethnologically  nearer  to  America, 
Australia  to  Africa,  than  New  Zealand  to  Australia. 

If  Ave  turn  from  ethnology  to  scenery  and  climate,  the 
countries  are  still  more  distinct.  New  Zealand  is  one  of  the 
groups  of  volcanic  islands  that  stud  the  Pacific  throughout 
its  whole  extent;  tremendous  cliffs  surround  it  on  almost 
every  side ;  a  great  mountain  chain  runs  through  both  islands 
from  north  to  south;  hot  springs  abound,  often  close  to  gla- 
ciers and  eternal  snows ;  earthquakes  are  common,  and  active 
volcanoes  not  unknown.  The  New  Zealand  climate  is  damp 
and  windy  ;  the  land  is  covered  in  most  parts  with  a  tangled 
jungle  of  tree-ferns,  creepers,  and  parasitic  plants ;  water 
never  fails,  and,  though  winter  is  unknown,  the  summer  heat 
is  never  great ;  the  islands  are  always  green.  Australia  has 
for  the  most  part  flat,  yellow,  sun-burnt  shores  ;  the  soil  may 
be  rich,  the  country  good  for  wheat  and  sheep,  but  to  the 
eye  it  is  an  arid  plain;  the  winters  are  pleasant,  but  in  the 
hot  weather  the  thermometer  rises  higher  than  it  does  in  In- 
dia, and  dust-storms  and  hot  winds  sweep  the  land  from  end 
to  end.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive  countries  more  unlike 
each  other  than  are  our  two  great  dominions  of  the  south. 


Sydney.  285 

Their  very  fossils  arc  as  dissimilar  as  are  their  flora  and  fauna 
of  our  time. 

At  dawn  of  the  first  day  of  the  new  year  we  sighted  the 
rocks  where  the  Duncan  Dunbar  was  lost  with  all  hands, 
and  a  few  minutes  afterward  we  were  boarded  by  the  crew 
engaged  by  the  Sydney  Morning  Herald,  who  had  been  ly- 
ing  at  "  The  Heads"  all  night,  to  intercept  our  news  and  tel- 
egraph it  to  the  city.  The  pilot  and  regular  news-boat  hail- 
ed us  a  little  later,  when  we  had  fired  a  gun.  The  contrast 
between  this  Australian  energy  and  the  supinencss  of  the 
New  Zealanders  was  striking,  but  not  more  so  than  that  be- 
tween my  first  view  of  Australia  and  my  last  view  of  New 
Zealand.  Six  days  earlier  I  had  lost  sight  of  the  snowy  peak 
of  Mount  Egmont,  graceful  as  the  Cretan  Ida,  while  we  ran 
before  a  strong  breeze,  in  the  bright  English  sunlight  of  the 
New  Zealand  afternoon,  the  albatrosses  screaming  around 
our  stern :  to-day,  as  we  steamed  up  Port  Jackson  toward 
Sydney  Cove,  in  the  dead  stillness  that  follows  a  night  of 
oven-like  heat,  the  sun  rose  flaming  in  a  lurid  sky,  and  struck 
down  upon  brown  earth,  yellow  grass,  and  the  thin,  shadeless 
foliage  of  the  Australian  bush,  while,  as  we  anchored,  the 
ceaseless  chirping  of  the  cricket  in  the  grass  and  trees  struck 
harshly  on  the  ear. 

The  harbor,  commercially  the  finest  in  the  world,  is  not 
without  a  singular  beauty  if  seen  at  the  best  time.  By  the 
"  hot-wind  sunrise,"  as  I  first  saw  it,  the  heat  and  glare  de- 
stroy the  feeling  of  repose  which  the  endless  succession  of 
deep,  sheltered  coves  would  otherwise  convey ;  but  if  it  be 
seen  from  shore  in  the  afternoon,  when  the  sea-breeze  has 
sprung  up,  turning  the  sky  from  red  to  blue,  all  is  changed. 
From  a  neck  of  land  that  leads  out  to  the  Government-house 
you  catch  a  glimpse  of  an  arm  of  the  bay  on  either  side  rip- 
pled with  the  cool  wind,  intensely  blue,  and  dotted  with 
white  sails :  the  brightness  of  the  colors  that  the  sea-breeze 
brings  almost  atones  for  the  wind's  unhealthiness. 

In  the  upper  portion  of  the  town  the  scene  is  less  pictur- 
esque ;  the  houses  are  of  the  commonplace  English  ugliness, 
worst  of  all  possible  forms  of  architectural  imbecility,  and 
are  built,  too,  as  though  for  English  fogs,  instead  of  semi- 
tropical  heat  and  sun.     Water  is  not  to  be  had,  and  the 


286  Greater  Britain. 

streets  are  given  up  to  clouds  of  dust,  while  not  a  single 
shade-tree  breaks  the  rays  of  the  almost  vertical  sun. 

The  afternoon  of  New-year's  Day  I  spent  at  the  "  Midsum- 
mer Meeting  "  of  the  Sydney  Jockey  Club  on  the  race-course 
near  the  city,  where  I  found  a  vast  crowd  of  holiday-makers 
assembled  on  the  bare  red  earth  that  did  duty  for  "  turf," 
although  there  was  a  hot  wind  blowing,  and  the  thermome- 
ter stood  at  103°  in  the  shade.  For  my  conveyance  to  the 
race-course  I  trusted  to  one  of  the  Australian  Hansom  cabs, 
made  with  fixed  Venetian  blinds  on  either  side,  so  as  to  allow 
a  free  draught  of  air. 

The  ladies  in  the  grand  stand  were  scarcely  to  be  distin- 
guished from  Englishwomen  in  dress  or  countenance,  but  the 
crowd  presented  several  curious  types.  The  fitness  of  the 
term  "  corn-stalks  "  applied  to  the  Australian-born  boys  was 
made  evident  by  a  glance  at  their  height  and  slender  build  ; 
they  have  plenty  of  activity  and  health,  but  are  wanting  in 
power  and  weight.  The  girls,  too,  are  slight  and  thin  ;  deli- 
cate, without  being  sickly.  Giwvn  men,  who  have  emigrated 
as  lads  and  lived  ten  or  fifteen  years  in  New  Zealand,  eating 
much  meat,  spending  their  days  in  the  open  air,  constantly 
in  the  saddle,  are  burly,  bearded,  strapping  fellows,  physical- 
ly the  perfection  of  the  English  race,  but  wanting  in  refine- 
ment and  grace  of  mind,  and  this  apparently  by  constitution ; 
not  through  the  accident  of  occupation  or  position.  In  Aus- 
tralia there  is  promise  of  a  more  intellectual  nation:  the 
young  Australians  ride  as  well,  shoot  as  well,  swim  as  well 
as  the  New  Zealanders ;  arc  as  little  given  to  book-learning, 
but  there  is  more  shrewd  intelligence,  more  wit  and  quick- 
ness, in  the  sons  of  the  larger  continent.  The  Australians 
boast  that  they  possess  the  Grecian  climate,  and  every  young 
face  in  the  Sydney  crowd  showed  me  that  their  sky  is  not 
more  like  that  of  the  Peloponnesus  than  they  are  like  the  old 
Athenians.  The  eager  burning  democracy  that  is  springing 
up  in  the  Australian  great  towns  is  as  widely  different  from 
the  republicanism  of  the  older  States  of  the  American  Union 
as  it  is  from  the  good-natured  conservatism  of  New  Zealand  ; 
and  their  high  capacity  for  personal  enjoyment  would  of  it- 
self suffice  to  distinguish  the  Australians  from  both  Ameri- 
cans and  British.     Larcre  as  must  be  the  amount  of  convict 


Sydney.  287 

blood  in  New  South  Wales,  there  was  no  trace  of  it  in  the 
features  of  those  present  upon  the  race-course.  The  inhabit- 
ant s  of  colonies  which  have  never  received  felon  immigrants 
often  cry  out  that  Sydney  is  a  convict  city,  but  the  preju- 
dice is  not  borne  out  by  the  countenances  of  the  inhabitants, 
nor  by  the  records  of  local  crime.  The  black  stain  has  not 
yet  wholly  disappeared:  the  streets  of  Sydney  are  still  a 
greater  disgrace  to  civilization  than  are  even  those  of  Lon- 
don ;  but,  putting  the  lighter  immoralities  aside,  security  for 
life  and  property  is  not  more  perfect  in  England  than  in  New 
South  Wales.  The  last  of  the  bush-rangers  were  taken  while 
I  was  in  Sydney. 

The  race-day  was  followed  by  a  succession  of  hot  winds, 
during  which  only  the  excellence  of  the  fruit-market  made 
Sydney  endurable.  Not  only  are  all  the  English  fruits  to  be 
found,  but  plantains,  guavas,  oranges,  loquats,  pomegranates, 
pine-apples  from  Brisbane,  figs  of  every  kind,  and  the  delicious 
passion-fruit  abound ;  and  if  the  gum-tree  forests  yield  no  sha- 
dy spots  for  picnics,  they  are  not  wanting  among  the  rocks  at 
Botany,  or  in  the  luxuriant  orange-groves  of  Paramatta. 

A  Christmas  week  of  heat  such  as  Sydney  has  seldom 
known  was  brought  to  a  close  by  one  of  the  heaviest  south- 
erly storms  on  record.  During  the  stifling  morning  the  tele- 
graph had  announced  the  approach  of  a  gale  from  the  far 
south,  but  in  the  early  afternoon  the  heat  was  more  terrible 
than  before,  when  suddenly  the  sky  was  dark  with  whirling 
clouds,  and  a  cold  blast  swept  through  the  streets,  carrying 
a  fog  of  sand,  breaking  roofs  and  windows,  and  dashing  to 
pieces  many  boats.  When  the  gale  ceased,  some  three  hours 
later,  the  sand  was  so  deep  in  houses  that  here  and  there 
men's  feet  left  footprints  on  the  stairs. 

Storms  of  this  kind,  differing  only  one  from  another  in  vio- 
lence, are  common  in  the  hot  weather:  they  are  known  as 
"southerly  bursters;"  but  the  early  settlers  called  them 
"  brick-fielders,"  in  the  belief  that  the  dust  they  brought  was 
whirled  up  from  the  kilns  and  brick-fields  to  the  south  of 
Sydney.  The  fact  is,  that  the  sand  is  carried  along  for  one 
or  two  hundred  miles  from  the  plains  in  Dampier  and  Auck- 
land counties;  for  the  Australian  "  burster"  is  one  with  tho 
Punjaub  dust-storm  and  the  "dirt-storm"  of  Colorado. 


288  Greater  Britain. 


CHAPTER  n. 

RIVAL     COLONIES, 


New  South  Wales,  born  in  1 788,  and  Queensland,  in  1859, 
the  oldest  and  youngest  of  our  Australian  colonies,  stand  side 
by  side  upon  the  map,  and  have  a  common  frontier  of  700  miles. 

The  New  South  Welsh  cast  jealous  glances  toward  the 
more  recently  founded  States.  Upon  the  brilliant  prosperity 
of  Victoria  they  looked  doubtingly,  and,  ascribing  it  merely 
to  the  gold-fields,  talk  of  "  shoddy ;"  but  of  Queensland — an 
agricultural  country,  with  larger  tracts  of  rich  land  than  they 
themselves  possess — the  Sydney  folks  are  not  without  reason 
envious. 

A  terrible  depression  is  at  present  pervading  trade  and 
agriculture  in  New  South  Wales.  Much  land  near  Sydney 
has  gone  out  of  cultivation ;  hands  are  scarce,  and  the  gold 
discoveries  in  the  neighboring  colonies,  by  drawing  off  the 
surplus  population,  have  made  harvest  labor  unattainable. 
Many  properties  have  fallen  to  one-third  their  former  value, 
and  the  colony — a  wheat-growing  country — is  now  import- 
ing wheat  and  flour  to  the  value  of  half  a  million  sterling 
every  year. 

The  depressed  condition  of  affairs  is  the  result  partly  of 
commercial  panics  following  a  period  of  inflation,  partly  of 
bad  seasons,  now  bringing  floods,  now  drought  and  rust,  and 
partly  of  the  discouragement  of  immigration  by  the  colonial 
democrats — a  policy  which  however  beneficial  to  Australia 
it  may  in  the  long  run  prove,  is  for  the  moment  ruinous  to 
the  sheep-farmers  and  to  the  merchants  in  the  towns.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  laborers  for  their  part  assert  that  the  ar- 
rivals of  strangers — at  all  events,  of  skilled  artisans — are  still 
excessive,  and  that  all  the  ills  of  the  colony  are  due  to  over- 
immigration  and  free  trade. 

To  a  stranger,  the  rush  of  population  and  outpour  of  cap- 
ital from  Sydney,  first  toward  Victoria,  but  now  to  Queens- 
land and  New  Zealand,  appear  to  be  the  chief  among  the 
causes  of  the  momentary  decline  of  New  South  Wales.     Of 


290  GrREATB'E    BllITAIN. 

immigrants  there  is  at  once  an  insufficient  and  an  overgreat 
supply.  Respectable  servant-girls,  carpenters,  masons,  black- 
smiths, plasterers,  and  the  like,  do  well  in  the  colonies,  and 
are  always  -wanted;  of  clerks,  governesses,  iron-workers,  and 
the  skilled  hands  of  manufacturers  there  is  almost  an  over- 
supply.  By  a  perverse  fate,  these  latter  are  the  immigrants 
of  whom  thousands  seek  the  colonies  every  year,  in  spite  of 
the  daily  publication  in  England  of  dissuading  letters. 

As  the  rivalry  of  the  neighbor-colonies  lessens  in  the  lapse 
of  time,  the  jealousy  that  exists  between  them  will  doubtless 
die  away ;  but  it  seems  as  though  it  will  be  replaced  by  a  po- 
litical divergence  and  consequent  aversion,  which  will  form 
a  fruitful  source  of  danger  to  the  Australian  confederation. 

In  Queensland  the  great  tenants  of  Crown  lands — "squat- 
ters" as  they  are  called — sheep-farmers  holding  vast  tracts 
of  inland  country,  are  in  possession  of  the  Government,  and 
administer  the  laws  to  their  own  advantage.  In  New  South 
Wales  power  is  divided  between  the  pastoral  tenants  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  democracy  of  the  towns  upon  the  other. 
In  Victoria  the  democrats  have  beaten  down  the  squatters,, 
and  in  the  interests  of  the  people  put  an  end  to  their  reign; 
but  the  sheep-farmers  of  Queensland  and  of  the  interior  dis- 
tricts of  New  South  Wales,  ignoring  wells,  assert  that  the 
"  up-country  desert,"  or  "  nn watered  tracts,"  can  never  be 
made  available  for  agriculture,  while  the  democracy  of  the 
coast  point  to  the  fact  that  the  same  statements  were  made 
only  a  few  years  back  of  lands  now  bearing  a  prosperous 
population  of  agricultural  settlers. 

The  struggle  between  the  great  Crown  tenants  and  the 
agricultural  democracy  in  Victoria,  already  almost  over,  in 
New  South  Wales  can  be  decided  only  in  one  way;  but  in 
Queensland  the  character  of  the  country  is  not  entirely  the 
same :  the  coast  and  river  tracts  are  tropical  bush-lands,  in 
which  sheep-farming  is  impossible,  and  in  which  sugar,  cot- 
ton, and  spices  alone  can  be  made  to  pay.  To  the  copper, 
gold,  hides,  tallow,  wool,  which  have  hitherto  formed  the 
stereotyped  list  of  Australian  exports,  the  Northern  colony 
has  already  added  ginger,  arrowroot,  tobacco,  coffee,  sugar, 
cotton,  cinnamon,  and  quinine. 

The  Queenslanders  have  not  yet  solved  the  problem  of  the 


Rival  Colonies.  291 

settlement  of  a  tropical  country  by  Englishmen,  and  of  its 
cultivation  by  English  hands.  The  future,  not  of  Queens- 
land merely,  but  of  Mexico,  of  Ceylon,  of  every  tropical  coun- 
try of  our  race,  of  free  government  itself,  are  all  at  stake; 
but  the  success  of  the  experiment  that  has  been  tried  be- 
tween Brisbane  and  Rockampton  has  not  been  great.  The 
colony,  indeed,  has  prospered  much,  quadrupling  its  popula- 
tion and  trebling  its  exports  and  revenue  in  six  years ;  but 
it  is  the  Darling  Downs,  and  other  table-land  sheep-countries, 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Northern  gold-fields,  which  are  the 
main  cause  of  the  pi-osperity ;  and  in  the  sugar  and  cotton 
culture  of  the  coast,  colored  labor  is  now  almost  exclusively 
employed,  with  the  usual  effect  of  degrading  field-work  in 
the  eyes  of  European  settlers,  and  of  forcing  upon  the  coun- 
try a  form  of  society  of  the  aristocratic  type. 

It  is  possible  that  just  as  New  England  has  of  late  forbid- 
den to  Louisiana  the  importation  of  Chinamen  to  work  her 
sugar-fields,  just  as  the  Kansas  radicals  have  declared  that 
they  will  not  recognize  the  Bombay  Hammal  as  a  brother, 
just  as  the  Victorians  have  refused  to  allow  the  further  re- 
ception of  convicts  by  West  Australia,  separated  from  their 
territories  by  1000  miles  of  desert,  so  the  New  South  Welsh 
and  Victorians  combined  may  at  least  protest  against  the 
introduction  of  a  mixed  multitude  of  Bengalees,  Chinamen, 
South  Sea  Islanders,  and  Malays  to  cultivate  the  Queensland 
coast  plantations.  If,  however,  the  other  colonies  permit 
their  Northern  sister  to  continue  in  her  course  of  import- 
ing dark-skinned  laborers,  to  form  a  peon  population,  a  few 
years  will  see  her  a  wealthy  cotton  and  sugar-growing  coun- 
try, Avith  all  the  vices  of  a  slave-holding  government,  though 
without  the  name  of  slavery.  The  planters  of  the  coast  and 
villages,  united  with  the  squatters  of  the  table-lands  or 
"  Downs,"  will  govern  Queensland,  and  render  union  with 
the  free  colonies  impossible,  tmless  great  gold  discoveries 
take  place,  and  save  the  country  to  Australia. 

Were  it  not  for  the  pride  of  race  that  everywhere  shows 
itself  in  the  acts  of  English  settlers,  there  might  be  a  bright 
side  to  the  political  future  of  the  Queensland  colony.  The 
colored  laborers  at  present  introduced — industrious  Tongans 
and  active  Hill-coolies  from  Hindostan,  laborious,  sober,  and 


292  Greater  Britain. 

free  from  superstition — should  not  only  be  able  to  advance 
the  commercial  fortunes  of  Queensland  as  they  have  those  of 
the  Mauritius,  but  eventually  to  take  an  equal  share  in  free 
government  with  their  white  employers.  To  avoid  the  gi- 
gantic evil  of  the  degradation  of  hand  labor,  which  has  ruin- 
ed morally  as  well  as  economically  the  Southern  States  of 
the  American  republic,  the  Indian,  Malay,  and  Chinese  la- 
borers should  be  tempted  to  become  members  of  land-hold- 
ing associations.  A  large  spice  and  sugar-growing  popula- 
tion in  Northern  Queensland  Mould  require  a  vast  agricult- 
ural population  in  the  south  to  feed  it ;  and  the  two  colo- 
nies, hitherto  rivals,  might  grow  up  as  sister  countries,  each 
depending  upon  the  other  for  the  supply  of  half  its  needs. 
It  is,  however,  worthy  of  notice  that  the  agreements  of  the 
Queensland  planters  with  the  imported  dark-skinned  field- 
hands  provide  only  for  the  payment  of  wages  in  goods,  at  the 
rates  of  6s.  to  10s.  a  month.  The  "goods"  consist  of  pipes, 
tobacco,  knives,  and  beads.  Judging  from  the  experience  of 
California  and  Ceylon,  there  can  be  little  hope  of  the  general 
admission  of  colored  men  to  equal  rights  by  English  settlers ; 
and  the  Pacific  islands  offer  so  tempting  a  field  to  kidnap* 
ping  skippers  that  there  is  much  fear  that  Queensland  may 
come  to  show  us  not  merely  semi-slavery,  but  peonage  of  that 
worst  of  kinds,  in  which  it  is  cheaper  to  work  the  laborer  to 
death  than  to  "  breed  "  him. 

Such  is  the  present  rapidity  of  the  growth  and  rise  to 
power  of  tropical  Queensland,  such  the  apparent  poverty  of 
New  South  Wales,  that  were  the  question  merely  one  be- 
tween the  Sydney  wheat-growers  and  the  cotton-planters  of 
Brisbane  and  Rockampton,  the  sub-tropical  settlers  would 
be  as  certain  of  the  foremost  position  in  any  future  confeder- 
ation, as  they  were  in  America  when  the  struggle  lay  only 
between  the  Carolinas  and  New  England.  As  it  is,  just  aa 
America  was  first  saved  by  the  coal  of  Pennsylvania  and 
Ohio,  Australia  will  be  saved  by  the  coal  of  New  South 
Wales.  Queensland  possesses  some  small  stores  of  coal,  bu\ 
the  vast  preponderance  of  acreage  of  the  great  power  of  the 
future  lies  in  New  South  Wales. 

On  my  return  from  a  short  voyage  to  the  north,  I  visited 
the  coal-field  of  New  South  Wales  at  Newcastle,  on  the  Hunk 


Rival  Colonies.  293 

cr.  The  beds  are  of  vast  extent ;  they  lie  upon  the  banks  of  a 
navigable  river,  and  so  near  to  the  surface  that  the  best  quali- 
ties are  raised,  in  a  country  of  dear  labor,  at  Ss.  or  9s.  the 
ton,  and  delivered  on  board  ship  for  12s.  For  manufacturing 
purposes  the  coal  is  perfect ;  for  steam-ship  use  it  is,  though 
somewhat  "  dirty,"  a  serviceable  fuel ;  and  copper  and  iron 
are  found  in  close  proximity  to  the  beds.  The  Newcastle 
and  Port  Jackson  fields  open  a  singularly  brilliant  future  to 
Sydney  in  these  times,  when  coal  is  king  in  a  far  higher  de- 
gree than  Avas  ever  cotton.  To  her  black  beds  the  colony 
will  owe  not  only  manufactures,  bringing  wealth  and  popu- 
lation, but  that  leisure  which  is  begotten  of  riches — leisure 
that  brings  culture,  and  love  of  harmony  and  truth. 

Manufactories  are  already  springing  up  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Sydney,  adding  to  the  whirl  and  bustle  of  the  town, 
and  adding,  too,  to  its  enormous  population,  already  dispro- 
portionate to  that  of  the  colony  in  which  it  stands.  As  the 
depot  for  much  of  the  trade  of  Queensland  and  New  Zealand, 
and  as  the  metropolis  of  pleasure  to  which  the  wealthy 
squatters  pour  from  all  parts  of  Australia,  to  spend  rapidly 
enough  their  hard-won  money,  Sydney  would  in  any  case 
have  been  a  populous  city;  but  the  barrenness  of  the  coun- 
try in  which  it  stands  has,  until  the  recent  opening  of  the 
railroads,  tended  still  further  to  increase  its  size,  by  failing 
to  tempt  into  the  country  the  European  immigrants.  The 
Irish  in  Sydney  form  a  third  of  the  population,  yet  hardly 
one  of  these  men  but  meant  to  settle  upon  land  when  he  left 
his  native  island. 

In  France  there  is  a  tendency  to  migrate  to  Paris,  in  Aus- 
tria, a  continual  drain  toward  Vienna,  in  England,  toward 
London.  A  corresponding  tendency  is  observable  through- 
out Australia  and  America.  Immigrants  hang  about  New 
York,  Philadelphia,  Boston,  Sydney,  Melbourne ;  and,  find- 
ing that  they  can  scrape  a  living  in  these  large  cities  with 
toil  somewhat  less  severe  than  that  which  would  be  needed 
to  procure  them  a  decent  livelihood  in  the  bush,  the  unthrifty 
as  well  as  the  dissipated  throng  together  in  densely-popu- 
lated "  rookeries  "  in  these  cities,  and  render  the  first  quar- 
ter of  New  York  and  the  so-called  "Chinese"  quarter  of 
Melbourne  an  insult  to  the  civilization  of  the  world. 


2(J4  Greater  Britain. 

In  the  case  of  Australia  this  concentration  of  population 
is  becoming  more  remarkable  day  by  day.  Even  under  the 
system  of  free  selection,  by  which  the  Legislature  has  at- 
tempted to  encourage  agricultural  settlement,  the  moment  a 
free  selector  can  make  a  little  money  he  comes  to  one  of  the 
capitals  to  spend  it.  Sydney  is  the  city  of  pleasure,  to 
which  the  wealthy  Queensland  squatters  resort  to  spend 
their  money,  returning  to  the  north  for  fresh  supplies  only 
when  they  can  not  afford  another  day  of  dissipation,  while 
Melbourne  receives  the  outpour  of  Tasmania. 

The  rushing  to  great  cities  the  moment  there  is  money 
to  be  spent,  characteristic  of  the  settlers  in  all  these  colonies, 
is  much  to  be  regretted,  and  presents  a  sad  contrast  to  the 
quiet  stay-at-home  habits  of  American  farmers.  Every  thing 
here  is  fever  and  excitement — as  in  some  systems  of  geome- 
try motion  is  the  primary,  rest  the  derived  idea.  New  South 
Welshmen  tell  you  that  this  unquiet  is  peculiar  to  Victoria ; 
to  a  new-comer  it  seems  as  rife  in  Sydney  as  in  Melbourne. 

Judging  from  the  Colonial  Government  reports,  which 
immigrants  are  conjured  by  the  inspectors  to  procure  and 
read,  and  which  are  printed  in  a  cheap  form  for  the  purpose, 
the  New  South  Welsh  can  hardly  wish  to  lure  settlers  into 
"  the  bush  ;"  for  in  one  of  these  documents,  published  while 
I  was  in  Sydney,  the  curator  of  the  Museum  reported  that  in 
his  explorations  he  never  went  more  than  twelve  miles  from 
the  city,  but  that  within  that  circuit  he  found  seventeen  dis- 
tinct species  of  land-snakes,  two  of  sea-snakes,  thirty  of  liz- 
ards, and  sixteen  of  frogs — seventy-eight  species  of  reptiles 
rewarded  him  in  all.  The  seventeen  species  of  land-snakes 
found  by  him  within  the  suburbs  Mere  named  by  the  curator 
in  a  printed  list ;  it  commenced  with  the  pale-headed  snake, 
and  ended  with  the  death-adder. 


CHAPTER  HI. 

VICTORIA. 

The  smallest  of  our  southern  colonies  except  Tasmania — 
one-fourth  the  size  of  New  South  Wales,  one-eighth  of  Queens- 
land, onc-tAvclfth  of  West  Australia,  one-fifteenth  of  South 


BUSH  SCENERY. 


COLLIN'S  STKEBT-EAST  ;    MELBOURNE. 


296  Greater  Britain. 

Australia — Victoria  is  the  wealthiest  of  the  Australian  na- 
tions, and,  India  alone  excepted,  has  the  largest  trade  of  any 
of  the  dependencies  of  Great  Britain. 

When  Mr.  Fawkner's  party  landed  in  1835  upon  the  Yarra 
banks,  mooring  their  boat  to  the  forest-trees,  they  formed  a 
settlement  upon  a  grassy  hill  behind  a  marsh,  and  began  to 
pasture  sheep  where  Melbourne,  the  capital,  now  stands.  In 
twenty  years  Melbourne  became  the  largest  city  but  one  in 
the  southern  hemisphere,  having  150,000  people  within  her 
limits  or  those  of  the  suburban  towns.  Victoria  has  grand- 
er public  buildings  in  her  capital,  larger  and  more  costly 
railroads,  a  greater  income,  and  a  heavier  debt  than  any 
other  colony,  and  she  pays  to  her  governor  £10,000  a  year, 
or  one-fourth  more  than  even  New  South  Wales. 

When  looked  into,  all  this  success  means  gold.  There  is 
industry,  there  is  energy,  there  is  talent,  there  is  generosity 
and  public  spirit,  but  they  are  the  abilities  and  virtues  that 
gold  will  bring,  in  bringing  a  rush  from  all  the  world  of  dash- 
ing fellows  in  the  prime  of  life.  The  progress  of  Melbourne 
is  that  of  San  Francisco  ;  it  is  the  success  of  Hokitika  on  a 
larger  scale,  and  refined  and  steadied  by  having  lasted  through 
some  years — the  triumph  of  a  population  which  has  hitherto 
consisted  chiefly  of  adult  males. 

Sydney  people,  in  their  jealousy  of  the  Victorians,  refuse 
to  admit  even  that  the  superior  energy  of  the  Melbourne 
men  is  a  necessary  consequence  of  their  having  been  the  pick 
of  the  spirited  youths  of  all  the  world,  brought  together  by 
the  rush  for  gold.  At  the  time  of  the  first  "find"  in  1851 
all  the  resolute,  able,  physically  strong  do-naughts  of  Europe 
and  America  flocked  into  Port  Philip,  as  Victoria  was  then 
called ;  and  such  timid  and  weak  men  as  came  along  with 
them  being  soon  crowded  out,  the  men  of  energy  and  tough 
vital  force  alone  remained. 

Some  of  the  New  South  Welsh,  shutting  their  eyes  to  the 
facts  connected  with  the  gold-rush,  assert  so  loudly  that  the 
Victorians  are  the  refuse  of  California,  or  "  Yankee  scum," 
that  when  I  first  landed  in  Melbourne  I  expected  to  find 
street-cars,  revolvers,  big  hotels,  and  fire-clubs,  euchre,  cau- 
cuses, and  mixed  drinks.  I  could  discover  nothing  American 
about  Melbourne  except  the  grandeur  of  the  public  buildings 


Victoria.  297 

and  the  width  of  the  streets,  and  its  people  are  far  more 
thoroughly  British  than  are  the  citizens  of  the  rival  capital. 
In  many  senses  Melbourne  is  the  London,  Sydney  the  Paris, 
of  Australia. 

Of  the  surpassing  vigor  of  the  Victorians  there  can  be  no 
doubt ;  a  glance  at  the  map  shows  the  Victorian  railways 
stretching  to  the  Murray,  while  those  of  New  South  Wales 
are  still  boggling  at  the  Green  Hills,  fifty  miles  from  Sydney. 
Melbourne,  the  more  distant  port,  has  carried  off  the  Austra- 
lian trade  with  the  New  Zealand  gold-fields  from  Sydney, 
the  nearer  port.  Melbourne  imports  Sydney  shale,  and  makes 
from  it  mineral  oil  before  the  Sydney  people  have  found  out 
its  value ;  and  gas  in  Melbourne  is  cheaper  than  in  Sydney, 
though  the  Victorians  are  bringing  their  coal  five  hundred 
miles,  from  a  spot  only  fifty  miles  from  Sydney. 

It  is  possible  that  the  secret  of  the  superior  energy  of  the 
Victorians  may  lie,  not  in  the  fact  that  they  are  more  Ameri- 
can, but  more  English,  than  the  New  South  Welsh.  The 
leading  Sydney  people  are  mainly  the  sons  or  grandsons  of 
original  settlers — "cornstalks"  reared  in  the  semi-tropical 
climate  of  the  coast ;  the  Victorians  are  full-blooded  English 
immigrants,  bred  in  the  more  rugged  climes  of  Tasmania, 
Canada,  or  Great  Britain,  and  brought  only  in  their  maturity 
to  live  in  the  exhilarating  air  of  Melbourne,  the  finest  climate 
in  the  world  for  healthy  men  :  Melbourne  is  hotter  than  Syd- 
ney, but  its  climate  is  never  tropical.  The  squatters  on  the 
Queensland  Downs,  mostly  immigrants  from  England,  show 
the  same  strong  vitality  that  the  Melbourne  men  possess ; 
but  their  brother-immigrants  in  Brisbane — the  Queensland 
capital,  where  the  languid  breeze  resembles  that  of  Sydney 
— are  as  incapable  of  prolonged  exertion  as  are  the  "  corn- 
stalks." 

Whatever  may  be  the  causes  of  the  present  triumph  of 
Melbourne  over  Sydney,  the  inhabitants  of  the  latter  city 
are  far  from  accepting  it  as  likely  to  be  permanent.  They 
can  not  but  admit  the  present  glory  of  what  they  call  the 
"  Mushroom  City."  The  magnificent  pile  of  the  new  Post- 
office,  the  gigantic  Treasury  (which,  when  finished,  will  be 
larger  than  our  own  in  London),  the  University,  the  Parlia- 
ment-house, the  Union  and  Melbourne  Clubs,  the  City  Hall, 

N2 


298  Greater  Britain. 

the  AVool  Exchange,  the  viaducts  upon  the  Government  rail- 
road lines — all  are  Cyclopean  in  their  architecture,  all  seem 
built  as  if  to  last  forever  ;  still,  they  say  that  there  is  a  cer- 
tain want  of  permanence  about  the  prosperity  of  Victoria. 
When  the  gold  discovery  took  place  in  1851,  such  a  trade 
sprang  up  that  the  imports  of  the  colony  jumped  from  one 
million  to  twenty-live  million  sterling  in  three  years;  but  al- 
though she  is  now  commencing  to  ship  breadstuff's  to  Great 
Britain,  exports  and  imports  alike  show  a  steady  decrease. 
Considerably  more  than  half  of  the  hand-workers  of  the  col- 
ony are  still  engaged  in  gold-mining,  and  nearly  half  the  pop- 
ulation is  resident  upon  the  gold-fields ;  yet  the  yield  shows, 
year  by  year,  a  continual  decline.  Had  it  not  been  for  the 
discoveries  in  New  Zealand,  which  have  carried  off  the  float- 
ing digger  population,  and  for  the  wise  discouragement  by 
the  democrats  of  the  monopolization  of  the  land,  there  would 
have  been  distress  upon  the  gold-fields  during  the  last  few 
years.  The  Victorian  population  is  already  nearly  stationary, 
and  the  squatters  call  loudly  for  assisted  immigration  and  free 
trade,  but  the  stranger  sees  nothing  to  astonish  him  in  the 
temporary  stagnation  that  attends  a  decreasing  gold  pro- 
duction. 

The  exact  economical  position  that  Victoria  occupies  is 
easily  ascertained,  for  her  statistics  are  the  most  perfect  in 
the  world;  the  arrangement  is  a  piece  of  exquisite  mosaic. 
The  brilliant  statistician  who  fills  the  post  of  registrar-gen- 
eral to  the  colony  had  the  immense  advantage  of  starting 
clear  of  all  tradition,  unhampered  and  unclogged  ;  and,  as  the 
Governments  of  the  other  colonies  have  the  last  few  years 
taken  Victoria  for  model,  a  gradual  approach  is  being  made 
to  uniformity  of  system.  It  wras  not  too  soon,  for  British 
colonial  statistics  are  apt  to  be  confusing.  I  have  seen  a  list 
of  imports  in  which  one  class  consisted  of  ale,  aniseed,  arsenic, 
asafcetida,  and  astronomical  instruments  ;  boots,  bullion,  and 
salt  butter;  capers,  cards,  caraway  seed;  gauze,  gin,  glue, 
and  gloves ;  maps  and  manure  ;  philosophical  instruments 
and  salt  pork ;  sandal-wood,  sarsaparilla,  and  smoked  sausages. 
Alphabetical  arrangement  has  charms  for  the  official  mind. 

Statistics  are  generally  considered  dull  enough,  but  the 
statistics  of  these  young  countries  are  figure-poems.     Tables 


Victoria.  299 

that  in  England  contrast  jute  with  hemp,  or  this  man  with 
that  man,  here  compare  the  profits  of  manufactures  with  those 
of  agriculture,  or  pit  against  each  other  the  powers  of  nice 
and  race. 

Victoria  is  the  only  country  in  existence  which  possesses 
a  statistical  history  from  its  earliest  birth ;  but,  after  all,  even 
Victoria  falls  short  of  Minnesota,  where  the  settlers  founded 
the  "  State  Historical  Society  "  a  week  before  the  foundation 
of  the  State. 

Gold,  wheat,  and  sheep  are  the  three  great  staples  of  Vic- 
toria, and  have  each  its  party,  political  and  commercial — dig- 
gers, agricultural  settlers,  and  squatters — though  of  late  the 
diggers  and  the  landed  democracy  have  made  common  cause 
against  the  squatters.  Gold  can  now  be  studied  best  at 
Ballarat,  and  wheat  at  Clunes,  or  upon  the  Barrabool  hills 
behind  Geeloug ;  but  I  started  first  for  Echxica,  the  head- 
quarters of  the  squatter  interest  and  metropolis  of  sheep; 
taking  upon  my  way  Kyneton,  one  of  the  richest  agricultur- 
al districts  of  the  colony,  and  also  the  once-famous  gold-dig- 
gings of  Bendigo  Creek. 

Between  Melbourne  and  Kyneton,  where  I  made  my  first 
halt,  the  railway  runs  through  undulating,  lightly-timbered 
tracts,  free  from  underwood,  and  well  grassed.  By  letting 
my  eyes  persuade  me  that  the  burnt-up  herbage  Avas  a  ri- 
pening crop  of  wheat  or  oats,  I  found  a  likeness  to  the  views 
in  the  weald  of  Sussex,  though  the  foliage  of  the  gums,  or 
eucalypti,  is  thinner  than  that  of  the  English  oaks. 

Riding  from  Kyneton  to  Carlsruhe,  Pastoria,  and  the  foot- 
hills of  the  "  Dividing  Range,"  I  found  the  agricultural  com- 
munity busily  engaged  on  the  harvest,  and  much  excited  upon 
the  great  thistle  question.  Women  and  tiny  children  were 
working  in  the  fields,  while  the  men  were  at  Kyneton,  trying 
in  vain  to  hire  harvest-hands  from  Melbourne  at  less  than 
£2  10s.  or  £3  a  week  and  board.  The  thistle  question  was 
not  less  serious:  the  "thistle  inspectors,"  elected  under  the 
"  Thistle  Prevention  Act,"  had  commenced  their  labors ;  and 
although  each  man  agreed  with  his  friend  that  his  neighbor's 
thistles  were  a  nuisance,  still  he  did  not  like  being  fined  for 
not  weeding  out  his  own.  The  fault,  they  say,  lies  in  the  cli- 
mate ;  it  is  too  good,  and  the  English  weeds  have  thriven. 


300  Greater  Britain. 

Great  as  was  the  talk  of  thistles,  the  fields  in  the  fertile  Kyne- 
ton  district  were  as  clean  as  in  a  well-kept  English  farm,  and 
showed  the  clearest  signs  of  the  small  farmer's  personal  care. 

Every  one  of  the  agricultural  villages  that  I  visited  was  a 
full-grown  municipality.  The  colonial  English,  freed  from  the 
checks  which  are  put  by  interested  landlords  to  local  gov- 
ernment in  Britain,  have  passed  in  all  the  settlements  laws 
under  which  any  village  must  be  raised  into  a  municipality 
on  fifty  of  the  villagers  (the  number  varies  in  the  different 
colonies)  signing  a  requisition,  unless  within  a  given  time  a 
larger  number  sign  a  petition  to  the  contrary  effect. 

After  a  short  visit  to  the  bustling  digging  town  of  Castle- 
maine  I  pushed  on  by  train  to  Sandhurst,  a  borough  of  great 
pretensions,  which  occupies  the  site  of  the  former  digging 
camp  at  Bendigo.  On  a  level  part  of  the  line  between  the 
two  great  towns  my  train  dashed  through  some  closed  gates, 
happily  without  hurt.  The  Melbourne  Argus  of  the  next  day 
said  that  the  crash  had  been  the  result  of  the  signalman  tak- 
ing the  fancy  that  the  trains  should  wait  on  him,  not  he  upon 
the  trains,  so  he  had  "  closed  the  gates,  hoisted  the  danger 
signal,  and  adjourned  to  a  neighboring  store  to  drink."  On 
my  return  from  Echuca  I  could  not  find  that  he  had  been  dis- 
missed. 

When  hands  are  scarce,  and  lives  valuable  not  to  the  pos- 
sessor only  but  to  the  whole  community,  care  to  avoid  acci- 
dents might  be  expected  ;  but  there  is  a  certain  recklessness 
in  all  young  countries,  and  not.  even  in  Kansas  is  it  more  ob- 
servable than  in  Victoria  and  New  South  Wales. 

Sandhurst,  like  Castlemaine,  straggles  over  hill  and  dale  for 
many  miles,  the  diggers  preferring  to  follow  the  gold-leads, 
and  build  a  suburb  by  each  alluvial  mine,  rather  than  draw 
their  supplies  from  the  central  spot.  The  extent  of  the 
worked-out  gold-field  struck  me  as  greater  than  in  the  fields 
round  Placerville,  but  then  in  California  many  of  the  old  dig- 
gings are  hidden  by  the  vines. 

In  Sandhurst  I  could  find  none  of  the  magnificent  restau- 
rants of  Virginia  City  ;  none  of  the  gambling-saloons  of  llo- 
kitika ;  and  the  only  approach  to  gayety  among  the  diggers 
was  made  in  a  drinking-hall,  where  some  dozen  red-shirted, 
bearded  men  were  dancing  by  turns  with  four  well-behaved 


Victoria.  301 

and  quiet-looking  German  girls,  who  were  paid,  the  constable 
at  the  gate  informed  me,  by  the  proprietor  of  the  booth.  My 
hotel — "  The  Shamrock  " — kept  by  New  York  Irish,  was  a 
thoroughly  American  house ;  but  then  digger  civilization  is 
everywhere  American — a  fact  owing,  no  doubt,  to  the  Ameri- 
can element  having  been  predominant  in  the  first-discovered 
diggings — those  of  California. 

Digger  revolts  must  have  been  feared  when  the  Sandhurst 
Government  Reserve  was  surrounded  with  a  ditch  strangely 
like  a  moat,  and  palings  that  bear  an  ominous  resemblance  to 
a  Maori  pah.  In  the  morning  I  found  my  way  through  the 
obstructions,  and  discovered  the  police-station,  and  in  it  the 
resident  magistrate,  to  whom  I  had  a  letter.  He  knew  noth- 
ing of  "  Gumption  Dick,"  Hank  Monk's  friend,  but  he  intro- 
duced me  to  his  intelligent  Chinese  clerk,  and  told  me  many 
things  about  the  yellow  diggers.  The  bad  feeling  between 
the  English  diggers  and  the  Chinese  has  not  in  the  least  died 
away.  Upon  the  worked-out  fields  of  Castlemaine  and  Sand- 
hurst the  latter  do  what  they  please,  and  I  saw  hundreds  of 
them  washing  quietly  and  quickly  in  the  old  Bendigo  Creek, 
finding  an  ample  living  in  the  leavings  of  the  whites.  So 
successful  have  they  been  that  a  few  Europeans-  have  lately 
been  taking  to  their  plan ;  and  an  old  Frenchman  who  died 
here  lately,  and  who,  from  his  working  persistently  in  worn- 
out  fields,  had  always  been  thought  to  be  a  harmless  idiot, 
left  behind  him  twenty  thousand  pounds,  obtained  by  wash- 
ing in  company  with  the  Chinese. 

The  spirit  that  called  into  existence  the  Ballarat  anti- 
Chinese  mobs  is  not  extinct  in  Queensland,  as  I  found  during 
my  stay  at  Sydney.  At  the  Crocodile  Creek  diggings  in 
Northern  Queensland,  whither  many  of  the  Chinese  from 
New  South  Wales  have  lately  gone,  terrible  riots  occurred 
the  -week  after  I  landed  in  Australia.  The  English  diggers 
announced  their  intention  of  "  rolling  up  "  the  Chinese,  and 
proceeded  to  "jump  their  claims" — that  is,  trespass  on  the 
mining-plots,  for  in  Queensland  the  Chinese  have  felt  them- 
selves strong  enough  to  purchase  claims.  The  Chinese  bore 
the  robbery  for  some  days,  but  at  last  a  digger  who  had  sold 
them  a  claim  for  £50  one  morning,  hammered  the  pegs  into 
the  soft  ground  the  same  day,  and  then  "jumped  the  claim" 


302  Greater  Britain. 

on  the  pretense  that  it  was  not  "  pegged  out."  This  was 
too  much  for  the  Chinese  owner,  who  tomahawked  the  dig- 
ger on  the  spot.  The  English  at  once  fired  the  Chinese 
town,  and  even  attacked  the  English  driver  of  a  coach  for 
conveying  Chinamen  on  his  vehicle.  Some  diggers  in  North 
Queensland  are  said  to  have  kept  bloodhounds  for  the  pur- 
pose of  hunting  Chinamen  for  sport,  as  the  rowdies  of  the 
Old  Country  hunt  cats  with  terriers. 

On  the  older  gold-fields,  such  as  those  of  Sandhurst  and 
Castlemaine,  the  hatred  of  the  English  for  the  Chinese  lies 
dormant,  but  it  is  not  the  less  strong  for  being  free  from 
physical  violence.  The  woman  in  a  baker's  shop  near  Sand- 
hurst, into  which  I  went  to  buy  a  roll  for  lunch,  shuddered 
when  she  told  me  of  one  or  two  recent  marriages  between 
Irish  "  Biddies  "  and  some  of  the  wealthiest  Chinese. 

The  man  against  whom  all  this  hatred  and  suspicion  is  di- 
rected is  no  ill-conducted  rogue  or  villain.  The  chief  of  the 
police  at  Sandhurst  said  that  the  Chinese  were  "  the  best  of 
citizens;"  a  member  of  the  Victorian  Parliament,  resident  on 
the  very  edge  of  their  quarter  at  Geelong,  spoke  of  the  yel- 
low men  to  me  as  "  well-behaved  and  frugal ;"  the  registrar- 
general  told  me  that  there  is  less  crime,  great  or  small, 
among  the  Chinese  than  among  any  equal  number  of  Ei> 
glish  in  the  colony. 

The  Chinese  are  not  denied  civil  rights  in  Victoria,  as 
they  have  been  in  California.  Their  testimony  is  accepted 
in  the  courts  against  that  of  whites ;  they  may  become  nat- 
uralized, and  then  can  vote.  Some  twenty  or  thirty  of  them, 
out  of  30,000,  have  been  naturalized  in  Victoria  up  to  the 
present  time. 

That  the  Chinese  in  Australia  look  upon  their  stay  in  the 
gold-fields  as  merely  temporary  is  clear  from  the  character 
of  their  restaurants,  which  are  singularly  inferior  to  those  of 
San  Francisco.  The  best  in  the  colonies  is  one  near  Castle- 
maine, but  even  this  is  small  and  poor.  Shark's  fin  is  an  un- 
heard-of luxury,  and  even  puppy  you  would  have  to  order. 
"  Silk-worms  fried  in  castor-oil "  is  the  colonial  idea  of  a 
Chinese  delicacy;  yet  the  famous  sea-slug  is  an  inhabitant 
of  Queensland  waters  and  the  Gulf  of  Carpentaria, 

From  Sandhurst  northward  the  country,  known  as  Elysium 


Victoria.  303 

Flats,  becomes  level,  and  is  Avooded  in  patches,  like  the  "  oak- 
opening;"  prairies  of  Wisconsin  and  Illinois.  Within  fifty 
miles  of  Echuca  the  line  comes  out  of  the  forest  on  to  a  vast 
prairie,  on  which  was  a  marvellous  mirage  of  water  and  trees 
at  various  step-like  levels.  From  the  other  window  of  the 
compartment  carriage  (sadly  hot  and  airless  after  the  Amer- 
ican cars)  I  saw  the  thin,  dry,  yellow  grass  on  fire  for  a 
dozen  miles.  The  smoke  from  these  "  bush-fires  "  sometimes 
extends  for  hundreds  of  miles  to  sea.  In  steaming  down 
from  Sydney  to  Wilson's  Promontory  on  my  way  to  Mel- 
bourne, we  passed  through  a  column  of  smoke  about  a  mile 
in  width  when  off"  Wolongong,  near  Botany  Bay,  and  never 
lost  sight  of  it,  as  it  lay  in  a  dense  brown  mass  upon  the  sea, 
until  we  rounded  Cape  Howe,  two  hundred  miles  farther  to 
the  southward. 

The  fires  on  these  great  plains  are  caused  by  the  dropping 
of  fusees  by  travellers  as  they  ride  along  smoking  their  pipes, 
Australian  fashion,  or  else  by  the  spreading  of  the  fires  from 
their  camps.  The  most  ingenious  stories  are  invented  by  the 
colonists  to  prevent  us  from  throwing  doubt  upon  their  care- 
fulness ;  and  I  Avas  told  at  Echuca  that  the  late  fires  had  been 
caused  by  the  concentration  of  the  sun's  rays  upon  spots  of 
grass  owing  to  the  accidental  conversion  into  burning-glasses 
of  beer-bottles  that  had  been  suffered  to  lie  about.  What- 
ever their  cause,  the  fires,  in  conjunction  with  the  heat,  have 
made  agricultural  settlement  upon  the  Murray  a  lottery. 
The  week  before  my  visit  some  ripe  oats  at  Echuca  had  been 
cut  down  to  stubble  by  the  hot  wind*  and  farmers  are  said 
to  count  upon  the  success  of  only  one  harvest  in  every  three 
seasons.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Victorian  apricots,  shrivelled 
by  the  hot  wind,  are  so  many  lumps  of  crystallized  nectar 
when  you  pierce  their  thick  outer  coats. 

Defying  the  sun,  I  started  off  to  the  banks  of  the  Murray 
River,  not  without  some  regret  at  the  absence  of  the  continu- 
ous street  verandas  which  in  Melbourne  form  a  first  step  to- 
ward the  Italian  piazza.  One  may  be  deceived  by  trifles 
when  the  character  of  an  unknown  region  is  at  stake.  Be- 
fore reaching  the  country,  I  had  read  "  Steam-packet  Hotel, 
Esplanade,  Echuca ;"  and,  though  experiences  on  the  Ohio 
had  taught  me  to  put  no  trust  in  "  packets  and  hotels,"  yet 


304  Greater  Britain. 

I  had  somehow  come  to  the  belief  th.it  the  Murray  must  be 
a  second  Missouri  at  least,  if  not  a  Mississippi.  The  "espla- 
nade" I  found  to  be  a  myth,  and  the  "fleet"  of  "steam- 
packets  "  was  drawn  up  in  a  long  line  upon  the  mud,  there 
being  in  this  summer  weather  no  water  in  which  it  could 
float.  The  Murray  in  February  is  a  streamless  ditch,  which 
in  America,  if  known  and  named  at  all,  would  rank  as  a  tenth- 
rate  river. 

The  St.  Lawrence  is  2200  miles  in  length,  and  its  tributa- 
ry, the  Ottawa,  1000  miles  in  length,  itself  receives  a  tributa- 
ry stream,  the  Gatineau,  with  a  course  of  420  miles.  At  217 
miles  from  its  confluence  with  the  Ottawa  the  Gatineau  is 
still  1000  feet  in  width.  At  Albury,  which  even  in  winter  is 
the  head  of  navigation  on  the  Murray,  you  are  only  some  600 
or  700  miles  by  river  from  the  open  sea,  or  about  the  same 
distance  as  from  Memphis  in  Tennessee  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Mississippi. 

During  six  months  of  the  year,  however,  the  Murray  is  for 
wool-carrying  purposes  an  important  river.  The  railway  to 
Echuca  has  tapped  the  river  system  in  the  Victorians'  favor, 
and  Melbourne  has  become  the  port  of  the  back  country  of 
New  South  Wales,  and  even  Queensland.  "  The  Kiverina  is 
commercially  annexed  "  to  Victoria,  said  the  premier  of  New 
South  Wales  while  I  was  in  that  colony,  and  the  "  Riverina" 
means  that  portion  of  New  South  Wales  which  lies  between 
the  Lachlan,  the  Murrumbidgee,  and  the  Murray,  to  the  north- 
ward of  Echuca. 

Returning  to  the  inn  to  escape  the  sun,  I  took  up  the  Riv- 
erina  Herald,  published  at  Echuca ;  of  its  twenty-four  col- 
umns, nineteen  and  a  half  are  occupied  by  the  eternal  sheep 
in  one  shape  or  another.  A  representation  of  Jason's  fleece 
stands  at  the  head  of  the  title ;  "  wool "  is  the  first  word  in 
the  first  line  of  the  body  of  the  paper.  More  than  half  of  the 
advertisements  are  those  of  wool-brokers,  or  else  of  the  fortu- 
nate possessors  of  specifics  that  will  cure  the  scab.  One  dis- 
infectant compound  is  certified  to  by  no  less  than  seventeen 
inspectors ;  another  is  puffed  by  a  notice  informing  flock-mas- 
ters that,  in  cases  of  foot-rot,  the  advertiser  goes  upon  the 
principle  of  "  no  cure,  no  pay."  One  firm  makes  "  liberal  ad- 
vances on  the  ensuing  clip ;"  another  is  prepared  to  do  the 


Victoria.  305 

like  upon  "  pastoral  securities."  Ship-chandlers,  regardless 
of  associations,  advertise  in  one  line  their  bread  and  foot-rot 
ointment,  their  biscuit  and  sheep-wash  solution ;  and  the  last 
of  the  advertisements  upon  the  front  page  is  that  of  an 
"  agent  for  the  sale  of  fat."  The  body  of  the  paper  contains 
complaints  against  the  judges  at  a  recent  show  of  wool,  and 
an  account  of  the  raising  of  a  sawyer  "  120  feet  in  length  and 
23  feet  in  girth"  by  the  new  "snag-boat"  working  to  clear 
out  the  river  for  the  floating  down  of  the  next  Avool-clip. 
Whole  columns  of  small  type  are  filled  with  "  impounding  " 
lists,  containing  brief  descriptions  of  all  the  strayed  cattle  of 
each  district.  The  technicalities  of  the  distinctive  marks  are 
surprising.  Who  not  to  the  manner  born  can  make  much 
of  this :  "  Blue  and  white  cow,  cock  horns,  22  off-rump,  IL  off- 
ribs  ?"  or  of  this  :  "  Strawberry  stag,  top  off  off-ear,  J.  C.  over 
4  off-rump,  like  H.  G.  conjoined  near  loin  and  rump  ?"  This, 
again,  is  difficult :  "  Swallow  tail,  off-ear,  D  reversed  and  il- 
legible over  F  off-ribs,  PT  off-rump."  What  is  a  "  blue  straw- 
berry bull?"  is  a  question  which  occurred  to  me.  Again, 
what  a  phenomenon  is  this :  "  White  cow,  writing  capital  A 
off-shoulder  ?"  A  paragraph  relates  the  burning  of"  £10,000 
worth  of  country  near  Gambier,"  and  advertisements  of  Colt's 
revolvers  and  quack  medicines  complete  the  sheet.  The  pa- 
per shows  that  for  the  most  part  the  colonists  here,  as  in  New 
Zealand,  have  had  the  wisdom  to  adopt  the  poetic  native 
names  of  places,  and  even  to  use  them  for  towns,  streets,  and 
ships.  Of  the  Panama  liners,  the  Rdkaia  and  Maitoura  bear 
the  names  of  rivers,  the  Ruahin'e  and  the  KaiJcoirra  names  of 
mountain  ranges  ;  and  the  colonial  boats  have  for  the  most 
part  familiar  Maori  or  Australian  names ;  for  instance,  lian- 
r/itoto,  "  hill  of  hills,"  and  Rangitiria,  "great  and  good."  The 
New  Zealand  colonists  are  better  off  than  the  Australian  in 
this  respect :  Wongawonga,  Yarrayarra,  and  Wooloomooloo 
are  not  inviting ;  and  some  of  the  Australian  villages  have 
still  stranger  names.  Nindooinbah  is  a  station  in  Southern 
Queensland  ;  Yallack-a-yallack,  Borongorong,  Bunduramon- 
gee,  Jabbarabbara,  Thuroroolong,  Yalla-y-poora,  Yanac-a-ya- 
nac,  Wuid  Kerruick,  Woolonguwoong  -  wrinan,  Woori  Yal- 
loak,  and  Borhonoyghurk  arc  stations  h>  Victoria.  The  only 
leader  in  the  Herald  is  on  the  meat  question,  but  there  is  in 


306  Greater  Britain. 

a  letter  an  account  of  the  Christmas  festivities  at  Melbourne, 
which  contains  much  merry-making  at  the  expense  of"  unac- 
climatized  new  chums,"  as  fresh-comers  to  the  colonies  are 
called.  The  writer  speaks  rapturously  of  the  rush  on  Christ- 
mas Day  from  the  hot,  dry,  dusty  streets  to  the  "  golden  fields 
of  waving  corn."  The  "  exposed  nature  of  the  Royal  Park  " 
prevented  many  excursionists  from  picnicking  there,  as  they 
had  intended;  but  we  read  on,  and  find  that  the  exposure 
dreaded  was  not  to  cold,  but  to  the  terrible  hot  wind  which 
swept  from  the  plains  of  the  north-west,  and  scorched  up  ev- 
ery blade  of  grass  in  the  open  spots.  We  hear  of  Christmas 
dinners  eaten  upon  the  grass  at  Richmond  in  the  sheltered 
shade  of  the  gum-forest,  but  in  the  Botanical  Gardens  the 
"  plants  had  been  much  affected  by  the  trying  heat."  How- 
ever, "  the  weather  on  Boxing-day  was  more  favorable  for 
open-air  enjoyment,"  as  the  thermometer  was  only  98°  in  the 
shade. 

Will  ever  New  Zealand  or  Australian  bards  spring  up  to 
write  of  the  pale  primroses  that  in  September  commence  to 
peep  out  from  under  the  melting  snows,  and  to  make  men 
look  forward  to  the  blazing  heat  and  the  long  December 
days?  Strangely  enough,  the  only  English  poem  which  an 
Australian  lad  can  read  without  laughing  at  the  Old-country 
conceit  that  connects  frost  with  January  and  hot  weather 
with  July,  is  Thomson's  "  Seasons,"  for  in  its  long  descrip- 
tions of  the  changes  in  England  from  spring  to  summer,  from 
autumn  to  winter,  a  month  is  only  once  named  :  "  rosy-foot- 
ed May"  can  not  be  said  to  "  steal  blushing  on"  in  Australia, 
where  May  answers  to  our  November. 

In  the  afternoon  I  ventured  out  again,  and  strolled  into 
the  gum-forest  on  the  banks  of  the  Campaspe  River,  not  be- 
lieving the  reports  of  the  ferocity  of  the  Victorian  bunyips 
and  alligators  which  have  lately  scared  the  squatters  who 
dwell  on  creeks.  The  black  trees,  relieved  upon  a  ground 
of  white  dust  and  yellow  grass,  were  not  inviting,  and  the 
scorching  heat  soon  taught  me  to  hate  the  shadrless  boughs 
and  ragged  bark  of  the  inevitable  gum.  It  had  not  rained 
for  nine  Aveeks  at  the  time  of  my  visit,  and  the  thermometer 
stood  at  11C°  in  the  shade,  but  there  was  nothing  oppressive 
in  the  heat ;  it  seemed  only  to  dry  up  the  juices  of  the  frame, 


Squatter   Aristocracy.  £07 

and  dazzle  you  with  intense  brightness.  I  soon  came  to  agree 
with  a  newly-landed  Irish  gardener,  who  told  a  friend  of 
mind  that  Australia  was  a  strange  country,  for  he  could  not 
see  that  the  thermometer  had  "the  slightest  effect  upon  the 
heat."  The  blaze  is  healthy,  and  fevers  are  unknown  in  the 
Kivcrina,  decay  of  noxious  matter,  animal  or  vegetable,  being 
arrested  during  summer  by  the  drought.  This  is  a  hot  year, 
for  on  the  12th  of  January  the  thermometer,  even  at  the  Mel- 
bourne Observatory,  registered  108°  in  the  shade,  and  123° 
in  the  shade  was  registered  at  Wentworth,  near  the  conflu- 
ence of  the  Murray  and  the  Darling. 

As  the  afternoon  drew  on,  and,  if  not  the  heat,  at  least  the 
sun  declined,  the  bell-birds  ceased  their  tuneful  chiming,  and 
the  forest  was  vocal  only  with  the  ceaseless  chirp  of  the  tree- 
oricket,  whose  note  recalled  the  goat-sucker  of  our  English 
woods.  The  Australian  landscapes  show  best  by  the  red 
light  of  the  hot-weather  sunsets,  when  the  dark  feathery  foli- 
age of  the  gum-trees  comes  out  in  exquisite  relief  upon  the 
fiery  fogs  that  form  the  sky,  and  the  yellow  earth,  gaining  a 
tawny  hue  in  the  lurid  glare,  throws  off  a  light  resembling 
that  which  in  winter  is  reflected  from  our  English  snows. 
At  sunset  there  was  a  calm,  but  as  I  turned  to  walk  home- 
ward the  hot  wind  sprang  up,  and  died  again,  while  the  trees 
sighed  themselves  uneasily  to  sleep,  as  though  fearful  of  the 
morrow's  blast. 

A  night  of  heavy  heat  was  followed  by  a  breathless  dawn, 
and  the  scorching  sun  returned  in  all  its  redness  to  burn  up 
once  more  the  earth,  not  cooled  from  the  glare  of  yesterday. 
Englishmen  must  be  bribed  by  enormous  gains  before  they 
will  work  with  continuous  toil  in  such  a  climate,  however 
healthy. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

SQUATTER    ARISTOCRACY. 


"  What  is  a  Colonial  Conservative  ?"  is  a  question  that 
used  to  be  daily  put  to  a  Victorian  friend  of  mine  when  he 
was  in  London.  His  answer,  he  told  me,  Avas  always,  "  A 
statesman  who  has  got  four  of  the  '  points '  of  the  People's 


308  Greater  Britain. 

Charter,  and  wants  to  conserve  them  ;"  but  as  used  in  Victo- 
ria, the  term  "  Conservative  "  expresses  the  feeling  less  of  a 
political  party  than  of  the  whole  of  the  people  who  have  any 
thing  whatever  to  lose.  Those  who  have  something  object 
to  giving  a  share  in  the  Government  to  those  who  have 
nothing  ;  those  who  have  much  object  to  political  equality 
with  those  who  have  less  ;  and,  not  content  with  having  won 
a  tremendous  victory  in  basing  the  Upper  House  upon  a 
£5000  qualification  and  £100  freehold  or  £300  leasehold 
franchise,  the  plutocracy  arc  meditating  attacks  upon  the 
Legislative  Assembly. 

The  democracy  hold  out  undauntedly,  refusing  all  mone- 
tary tests,  though  an  intelligence  basis  for  the  franchise  is  by 
no  means  out  of  favor,  except  with  the  few  who  can  not  read 
or  write.  One  day,  when  I  was  driving  from  Melbourne  to 
Sandridge  in  company  with  a  colonial  merchant,  he  asked 
our  car-driver:  "Now,  tell  me  fairly:  do  you  think  these 
rogues  of  fellows  that  hang  about  the  shore  here  ought  to 
have  votes  ?"  "  No,  I  don't."  "  Ah  !  you'd  like  to  see  a  5s. 
fee  on  registration,  wouldn't  you?"  The  answer  was  sharp 
enough  in  its  tone.  "Five  shillings  would  be  nothing  to 
you ;  it  would  be  something  to  me,  and  it  would  be  more 
than  my  brother  could  pay.  "What  I'd  do  would  be  to  say 
that  those  who  couldn't  read  shouldn't  vote  —  that's  all. 
That  would  keep  out  the  loafers." 

The  plutocratic  party  is  losing,  not  gaining,  ground  in 
Victoria;  it  is  far  more  likely  that  the  present  generation 
will  see  the  Upper  House  abolished  than  that  it  will  witness 
the  introduction  of  restrictions  upon  the  manhood  suffrage 
which  exists  for  the  Lower ;  but  there  is  one  branch  of  the 
plutocracy  which  actively  carries  on  the  fight  in  all  the  colo- 
nies, and  which  claims  to  control  society — the  pastoral  ten- 
ants of  Crown  lands,  or  Squatter  Aristocracy. 

The  word  "  squatter  "  has  xmdergone  a  remarkable  change 
of  meaning  since  the  time  when  it  denoted  those  who  stole 
Government  land,  and  built  their  dwellings  on  it.  As  late 
as  1837  squatters  were  defined  by  the  Chief-justice  of  New 
South  Wales  as  people  occupying  lands  without  legal  title, 
and  subject  to  a  fine  on  discovery.  They  were  described  as 
living  by  bartering  rum  with  convicts  for  stolen  goods,  and 


Squatter  Aristocracy.  309 

as  being  themselves  invariably  convicts  or  "  expirees."  Es- 
caping suddenly  from  these  low  associations,  the  word  came 
to  be  applied  to  graziers  who  drove  their  flocks  into  the  un- 
settled interior,  and  thence  to  those  of  them  who  received 
leases  from  the  Crown  of  pastoral  lands. 

The  squatter  is  the  nabob  of  Melbourne  and  Sydney,  the 
inexhaustible  mine  of  wealth.  He  patronizes  balls,  prome- 
nade concerts,  flower-shows  ;  he  is  the  main-stay  of  the  great 
clubs,  the  joy  of  the  shop-keepers,  the  good  angel  of  the  ho- 
tels ;  without  him  the  opera  could  not  be  kept  up,  and  the 
jockey-club  would  die  a  natural  death. 

Neither  squatters  nor  towns-folk  will  admit  that  this  view 
of  the  former's  position  is  correct.  The  Victorian  squat- 
ters tell  you  that  they  have  been  ruined  by  confiscation,  but 
that  their  neighbors  in  New  South  Wales,  who  have  leas- 
es, are  more  prosperous;  in  New  South  Wales  they  tell  you 
of  the  destruction  of  the  squatters  by  "  free  selection," 
of  which  there  is  none  in  Queensland,  "  the  squatter's  para- 
dise ;"  but  in  Queensland  the  squatters  protest  that  they  have 
never  made  wages  for  their  personal  work,  far  less  inter- 
est upon  their  capital.  "  Not  one  of  us  in  ten  is  solvent,"  is 
their  cry. 

As  sweeping  assertions  are  made  by  the  towns-folk  upon 
the  other  side.  The  squatters,  they  sometimes  say,  may  well 
set  up  to  be  a  great  landed  aristocracy,  for  they  have  every 
fault  of  a  dominant  caste  except  its  generous  vices.  They 
are  accused  of  piling  up  vast  hoards  of  wealth  while  living  a 
most  penurious  life,  and  contributing  less  than  would  so  many 
mechanics  to  the  revenue  of  the  country,  in  order  that  they 
may  return  in  later  life  to  England,  there  to  spend  what  they 
have  wrung  from  the  soil  of  Victoria  or  New  South  Wales. 

The  occupation  of  the  whole  of  the  Crown  lands  by  squat- 
ters has  prevented  the  making  of  railways  to  be  paid  for  in 
land,  on  the  American  system ;  but  the  chief  of  all  the  evils 
connected  with  squatting  is  the  tendency  to  the  accumulation 
in  a  few  hands  of  all  the  land  and  all  the  pastoral  wealth  of 
the  country,  an  extreme  danger  in  the  face  of  democratic  in- 
stitutions, such  as  those  of  Victoria  and  New  South  Wales. 
Remembering  that  manufactures  are  few,  the  swelling  of  the 
cities  shows  how  the  people  have  been  kept  from  the  land ; 


310  Greater  Britain. 

considerably  more  than  half  of  the  population  of  Victoria 
lives  within  the  corporate  towns. 

A  few  years  back  a  thousand  men  held  between  them,  on 
nominal  rents,  forty  million  acres  out  of  the  forty-three  and 
a  half  million — mountain  and  swamp  excluded — of  which 
Victoria  consists.  It  is  true  that  the  amount  so  held  has  now 
decreased  to  thirty  million,  but  on  the  other  hand  the  squat- 
ters have  bought  vast  tracts  which  were  formerly  within 
their  "runs"  with  the  capital  acquired  in  squatting',  and, 
knowing  the  country  better  than  others  could  know  it,  have 
selected  the  most  valuable  land. 

The  colonial  democracy  in  1860  and  the  succeeding  years 
rose  to  a  sense  of  its  danger  from  the  land  monopoly,  and  be- 
gan to  search  about  for  means  to  put  it  down,  and  to  destroy 
at  the  same  time  the  system  of  holding  from  the  Crown  ;  for 
it  is  singular  that  while  in  England  there  seems  to  be  spring- 
ing up  a  popular  movement  in  favor  of  the  nationalization  of 
the  land,  in  the  most  democratic  of  the  Australian  colonics 
the  tendency  is  from  Crown-land  tenure  toward  individual 
freehold  ownership  of  the  soil.  Yet,  here  in  Victoria  there 
was  a  fair  field  to  start  upon,  for  the  land  already  belonged 
to  the  State — the  first  of  the  principles  included  under  the 
phrase  nationalized  land.  In  America,  again,  we  see  that, 
with  the  similar  advantage  of  State  possession  of  territories 
which  are  still  fourteen  times  the  size  of  the  French  Empire, 
there  is  little  or  no  tendency  toward  agitation  for  the  contin- 
uance of  State  ownership.  In  short,  freehold  ownership  seems 
dear  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  while  the  national  land  plan 
would  commend  itself  rather  to  the  Celtic  races:  to  the 
Highlander,  who  remembers  clanship,  to  the  Irishman,  who 
regrets  the  Sept. 

Since  the  Radicals  have  been  in  power,  both  here  and  in 
New  South  Wales,  they  have  carried  act  after  act  to  en- 
courage agricultural  settlers  on  freehold  tenure,  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  pastoral  squatters.  The  "  free  selection  "  plan, 
now  in  operation  in  New  South  Wales,  allows  the  agricultur- 
al settler  to  buy,  but  at  a  fixed  price,  the  freehold  of  a  patch 
of  land,  provided  it  be  over  forty  acres  and  less  than  320, 
anywhere  he  pleases  —  even  in  the  middle  of  a  squatter's 
"  run/'  if  he  enters  at  once,  and  commences  to  cultivate  ;  and 


Colonial  Democracy.  311 

the  Land  Act  of  18G2  provides  that  the  squatting  license 
system  shall  entirely  end  with  the  year  1869.  Forgetting 
that  in  every  lease  the  Government  reserved  the  power  of 
terminating  the  agreement  for  the  purpose  of  the  sale  of 
land,  the  squatters  complain  that  free  selection  is  hut  confis- 
cation, and  that  they  are  at  the  mercy  of  a  pack  of  cattle- 
stealers  and  horse-thieves,  who  roam  through  the  country 
haunting  their  runs  like  "  ghosts,"  taking  up  the  best  land  on 
their  runs, "  picking  the  eyes  out  of  the  land,"  and  turning  to 
graze  anywhere,  on  the  richest  grass,  the  sheep  and  cattle 
they  have  stolen  on  their  way.  The  best  of  them,  they  say, 
arc  but  "  cockatoo  farmers,"  living  from  hand  to  mouth  on 
what  they  manage  to  grub  and  grow.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  "  free  selection  "  principle  "  up  country  "  is  tempered  by 
the  power  of  the  wealthy  squatter  to  impound  the  cattle  of 
the  poor  little  freeholder  whenever  he  pleases  to  say  that 
they  stray  on  to  his  "  run  ;"  indeed,  "  Pound  them  off,  or  if 
yon  can't,  buy  them  off,"  has  become  a  much-used  phrase. 
The  squatter,  too,  is  protected  in  Victoria  by  such  provisions 
as  that  "  improvements  "  by  him,  if  over  £40  on  forty  acres, 
cover  an  acre  of  land  for  each  £1.  The  squatters  arc  them- 
selves buying  largely  of  land,  and  thus  profiting  by  the  free 
selection.  To  a  stranger  it  seems  as  though  the  interests 
of  the  squatter  have  been  at  least  sufficiently  cared  for,  re- 
membering the  vital  necessity  for  immediate  action.  In 
1865  Victoria,  small  as  she  is,  had  not  sold  a  tenth  of  her 
land. 

In  her  free  selectors  Victoria  will  gain  a  class  of  citizens 
whose  political  views  will  contrast  sharply  with  the  strong 
anti-popular  sentiments  of  the  squatters,  and  who,  instead  of 
spending  their  lives  as  absentees,  will  stay,  they  and  their 
children,  upon  the  land,  and  spend  all  they  make  within  the 
colony,  while  their  sons  add  to  its  laboring  arms. 

Since  land  has  been,  even  to  a  limited  extent,  thrown  open, 
Victoria  has  suddenly  ceased  to  be  a  wheat-importing,  and 
become  a  wheat-exporting  country ;  and  flourishing  agricult- 
ural communities,  such  as  those  of  Ceres,  Clunes,  Kyneton, 
are  springing  up  on  every  side,  growing  wheat  instead  of 
wool,  while  the  wide  extension  which  has  in  Victoria  been 
given  to  the  principle  of  local  self-government  in  the  shape  of 


312  Greater  Britain. 

shire-councils,  road-boards,  and  village-municipalities,  allows 
of  the  union  of  the  whole  of  the  advantages  of  small  and 
great  fanning,  under  the  unequalled  system  of  small  holdings, 
and  co-operation  for  improvements  among  the  holders. 


CHAPTER  V. 

COLONIAL  DEMOCRACY. 


Payment  of  members  by  the  State  was  the  great  question 
under  debate  in  the  Lower  House  during  much  of  the  time 
I  spent  in  Melbourne,  and,  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  the 
Victorian  democracy,  the  bill  was  lost.  The  objection  taken 
at  home  that  payment  degrades  the  House  in  the  eyes  of  the 
people  could  never  arise  in  a  new  country,  where  a  practical 
nation  looks  at  the  salaries  as  payment  for  work  done,  and 
obstinately  refuses  to  believe  in  the  work  being  done  without 
payment  in  some  shape  or  other.  In  these  colonies  the  reasons 
in  favor  of  payment  are  far  stronger  than  they  are  in  Cana- 
da or  America  ;  for  while  there  country  or  town  share  equal- 
ly the  difficulties  of  finding  representatives  who  will  consent 
to  travel  hundreds  and  thousands  of  miles  to  Ottawa  or 
Washington,  in  the  Australias  Parliament  sits  in  towns  which 
contain  from  one-sixth.to  one-fourth  of  the  whole  population, 
and  under  a  non-payment  system  power  is  thrown  entirely 
into  the  hands  of  Melbourne,  Sydney,  Perth,  Brisbane,  Ade- 
laide, and  Hobarton.  Not  only  do  these  cities  return  none 
but  their  own  citizens,  but  the  country  districts,  often  unable 
to  find  within  their  limits  men  who  have  sufficient  time  and 
money  to  be  able  to  attend  throughout  the  sessions  at  the 
capital,  elect  the  city  traders  to  represent  them. 

Payment  of  members  was  met  by  a  proposition  on  the 
part  of  the  leader  of  the  squatter  party  in  the  Upper  House 
to  carry  it  through  that  assembly  if  the  Lower  House  would 
introduce  the  principle  of  personal  representation ;  but  it 
wras  objected  that  under  such  a  system  the  Catholics,  who 
form  a  fifth  of  the  population,  might,  if  they  chose,  return  a 
fifth  of  the  members.  That  they  ought  to  be  able  to  do  so 
never  seemed  to  strike  friend  or  foe.     The  Catholics,  who 


Colonial  Democracy.  '6Vj 

had  a  long  turn  of  power  under  the  O'Shaughnesscy  Govern- 
ment, were  finally  driven  out  for  appointing  none  but  Irish- 
men to  the  police.  "  I  always  said  this  ministry  would  go 
out  on  the  back  of  a  policeman"  was  the  comment  of  the 
Opposition  wit.  The  present  ministry,  which  is  Scotch  in 
tone,  Avas  hoisted  into  office  by  a  great  coalition  against  the 
Irish  Catholics,  of  whom  there  are  only  a  handful  in  the  House. 

The  subject  of  national  education,  which  was  before  the 
colony  during  my  visit,  also  brought  the  Catholics  promi- 
nently forward;  for  an  episcopal  pastoral  was  read  in  all 
their  churches,  threatening  to  visit  ecclesiastical  censure 
upon  Catholic  teachers  in  the  common  schools,  and  upon  the 
parents  of  the  children  who  attend  them.  "  Godless  educa- 
tion" is  as  little  popular  here  as  it  used  to  be  at  home,  and 
the  Anglican  and  Catholic  clergymen  insist  that  it  is  pro- 
posed to  make  their  people  pay  heavily  for  an  education  in 
which  it  would  be  contrary  to  their  conscience  to  share ;  but 
the  laymen  seem  less  distressed  than  their  pastors.  It  has 
been  said  that  the  reason  why  the  Catholic  bishop  declined 
to  be  examined  before  the  Education  Commission  was  that 
he  was  afraid  of  this  question :  "  Are  you  aware  that  half 
the  Catholic  children  in  the  country  are  attending  schools 
which  you  condemn  Y" 

The  most  singular,  perhaps,  of  the  spectacles  presented  by 
colonial  politics  during  my  visit  was  that  of  the  Victorian 
Upper  House  going  deliberately  into  committee  to  consider 
its  own  constitution,  with  the  view  of  introducing  a  bill  for 
its  own  reform,  or  to  meditate,  its  enemies  said,  upon  self-de- 
struction. "Whether  the  blow  comes  from  within  or  without, 
there  is  every  probability  that  the  Upper  House  will  shortly 
disappear,  and  the  advice  of  Milton  and  Franklin  be  followed 
in  having  but  a  single  chamber.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  this 
step  will  be  followed  by  the  demand  of  the  Victorians  to  be 
allowed  to  choose  their  own  governor,  subject  to  his  appi'ov- 
al  by  the  queen,  with  a  view  to  making  it  impossible  that 
needy  men  should  be  sent  out  to  suck  the  colony,  as  they 
sometimes  have  been  in  the  past.  The  Australians  look 
upon  the  liberal  expenditure  of  a  governor  as  their  own 
liberality,  but  upon  meanness  on  his  part  as  a  robbery  from 
themselves. 

O 


314  Greater  Britain. 

The  Victorian  have  a  singular  advantage  over  the  Ameri- 
can democrats  in  being  unhampered  by  a  constitution  of  an- 
tiquity and  renown.  Constitution-tinkering  is  here  continu- 
al ;  the  new  society  is  ever  re-shaping  its  political  institutions 
to  keep  pace  with  the  latest  developments  of  the  national 
mind ;  in  America,  the  party  of  liberty,  at  this  moment  en- 
gaged in  re-moulding  in  favor  of  freedom  the  worn-out  con- 
stitution, dares  not  even  yet  declare  that  the  national  good 
is  its  aim,  but  keeps  to  the  old  watch-words,  and  professes 
to  be  treading  in  the  footsteps  of  George  Washington. 

The  tone  of  Victorian  democracy  is  not  American.  There 
is  the  defiant  way  of  taking  care  of  themselves  and  ignoring 
their  neighbors  characteristic  of  the  founders  of  English 
plantations  in  all  parts  of  the  world  —  the  spirit  which 
prompted  the  passing,  in  1852,  of  the  act  prohibiting  the  ad- 
mission to  the  colony  of  convicts  for  three  years  after  they 
had  received  their  pardons ;  but  the  English  race  here  is  not 
Latinized  as  it  is  in  America.  If  it  were,  Australian  democ- 
racy would  not  be  so  "  shocking  "  to  the  squatters.  Democ- 
racy, like  Mormonism,  would  be  nothing  if  found  among 
Frenchmen  or  people  with  black  faces,  but  it  is  at  first  sight 
very  terrible  when  it  smiles  on  you  from  between  a  pair  of 
rosy  Yorkshire  cheeks. 

The  political  are  not  greater  than  the  social  differences 
between  Australia  and  America.  Australian  society  resem- 
bles English  middle-class  society ;  the  people  have,  in  mat- 
ters of  literature  and  religion,  tastes  and  feelings  similar  to 
those  which  pervade  such  communities  as  Birmingham  or 
Manchester.  On  the  other  hand,  the  vices  of  America  are 
those  of  aristocracies ;  her  virtues  those  of  a  landed  republic. 
Shop  and  factory  are  still  in  the  second  rank;  wheat  and  corn 
still  the  prevailing  powers.  In  all  the  Australian  colonies 
land  is  coining  to  the  front  for  the  second  time  under  a  sys- 
tem of  small  holdings;  but  it  is  doubtful  whether,  looking  to 
the  size  of  Melbourne,  the  landed  democracy  will  ever  out- 
vote the  town-folk  in  Victoria. 

That  men  of  ability  and  character  are  proscribed  has  been 
one  of  the  charges  brought  against  colonial  democracy.  For 
my  part,  I  found  gathered  in  Melbourne,  at  the  University, 
at  the   Observatory,  at  the  Botanical  Garden,  and  at  the 


Colonial  Democracy.  815 

( rovernment  offices,  men  of  the  highest  scientific  attainments, 
drawn  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  tempted  to  Australia 
by  large  salaries  voted  by  the  democracy.  The  statesmen 
of  all  the  colonies  are  well  worthy  of  the  posts  they  hold. 
Mr.  Macalister,  in  Queensland,  and  Mr.  Martin,  at  Sydney, 
are  excellent  debaters.  Mr.  Parkes,  whose  biography  would 
be  the  typical  history  of  a  successful  colonist,  and  who  has 
fought  his  way  up  from  the  position  of  a  Birmingham  artisan 
free-emigrant  to  that  of  Colonial  Secretary  of  New  South 
Wales,  is  an  able  writer.  The  business  powers  of  the  present 
Colonial  Treasurer  -of  New  South  Wales  are  remarkable  ; 
and  Mr.  Higinbotham,  the  Attorney-general  of  Victoria, 
possesses  a  fund  of  experience  and  a  power  of  foresight  which 
it  would  be  hard  to  equal  at  home.  Many  of  the  ministers 
in  all  the  colonies  are  men  who  have  worked  themselves  up 
from  the  ranks,  and  it  is  amusing  to  notice  the  affected  hor- 
ror with  which  their  antecedents  are  recalled  by  those  who 
have  brought  out  a  pedigree  from  the  Old  Country.  A  Gov- 
ernment clerk  in  one  of  the  colonies  told  me  that  the  three 
last  ministers  at  the  head  of  his  department  had  been  "  so 
low  in  the  social  scale  that  my  wife  could  not  visit  theirs." 

Class  animosity  runs  much  higher,  and  drives  its  roots 
far  deeper  into  private  life  in  Victoria  than  in  any  other 
English-speaking  country  I  have  seen.  Political  men  of  dis- 
tinction are  shunned  by  their  opponents  in  the  streets  and 
clubs ;  and,  instead  of  its  being  possible  to  differ  on  politics 
and  yet  continue  friends,  as  in  the  Old  Country,  I  have  seen 
men  in  Victoria  refuse  to  sit  down  to  dinner  with  a  states- 
man from  whose  views  on  land  questions  they  happened  to 
dissent.  A  man  once  warned  me  solemnly  against  dining 
with  a  quiet  grave  old  gentleman,  on  the  ground  that  he 
was  "  a  most  dangerous  Radical — a  perfect  firebrand." 

Treated  in  this  way,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  democratic 
ministers  and  members  stand  much  upon  their  dignity,  and 
Colonial  Parliaments  are  not  only  as  haughty  as  the  parent 
assembly  at  Westminster,  bat  often  inclined  to  assert  their 
privileges  by  the  most  arbitrary  of  means.  A  few  weeks  be- 
fore I  arrived  in  Melbourne  a  member  of  the  staff  of  the 
Argus  newspaper  was  given  up  by  the  proprietors  to  soothe 
the  infuriated  Assembly.     Having  got  him,  the  great  ques- 


316  Greater  Britain. 

tion  of  what  to  do  with  him  arose,  and  he  was  placed  in  a 
vault  with  a  grated  window,  originally  built  for  prisoners  of 
the  House,  but  which  had  been  temporarily  made  use  of  as 
a  coal-hole.  Such  a  disturbance  was  provoked  by  the  al- 
leged barbarity  of  this  proceeding  that  the  prisoner  was 
taken  to  a  capital  room  up  stairs,  where  he  gave  dinner- 
parties every  day.  His  opponents  said  the  great  difficulty 
was  to  get  rid  of  him,  for  he  seemed  to  be  permanently  loca- 
ted in  the  Parliament-house,  and  that,  when  they  ordered  his 
liberation,  his  friends  insisted  that  it  should  not  take  place 
until  he  had  been  carried  down  to  the  coal-hole  cell  which  he 
had  occupied  the  first  day,  and  there  photographed  "  through 
the  dungeon  bars"  as  the  "  martyr  of  the  Assembly." 

Though  both  Victoria  and  New  South  Wales  are  demo- 
cratic, there  is  a  great  difference  betAveen  the  two  democra- 
cies. In  New  South  "Wales  I  found  not  a  democratic  so  much 
as  a  mixed  country,  containing  a  large  and  wealthy  class 
with  aristocratic  prejudices,  but  governed  by  an  intensely 
democratic  majority — a  country  not  unlike  the  State  of 
Maryland.  On  the  other  hand,  the  interest  which  attaches 
to  the  political  condition  of  Victoria  is  extreme,  since  it 
probably  presents  an  accurate  view,  "  in  little,"  of  the  state 
of  society  which  will  exist  in  England,  after  many  steps  to- 
ward social  democracy  have  been  taken,  but  before  the  na- 
tion as  a  whole  has  become  completely  democratic. 

One  of  the  best  features  of  the  colonial  democracy  is  its 
earnestness  in  the  cause  of  education.  In  England  it  is  one 
of  our  worst  national  peculiarities  that,  whatever  our  sta- 
tion, we  either  are  content  with  giving  children  an  "  educa- 
tion "  which  is  absolutely  wanting  in  any  real  training  for 
the  mind  or  aid  to  the  brain  in  its  development,  or  else  we 
give  them  a  schooling  which  is  a  mere  preparation  for  the 
Bar  or  Church,  for  it  has  always  been  considered  with  us 
that  it  is  a  far  greater  matter  to  be  a  solicitor  or  a  curate  than 
to  be  wise  or  happy.  This  is,  of  course,  a  consequence  part- 
ly of  the  energy  of  the  race,  and  partly  of  our  aristocratic 
form  of  society,  which  leads  every  member  of  a  class  to  be 
continually  trying  to  get  into  the  class  immediately  above 
it  in  wealth  or  standing.  In  the  colonies,  as  in  the  United 
States,  the  democratic  form  which  societv  has  taken  has  car- 


Colonial  Democracy.  31V 

ried  with  it  the  continental  habit  of  thought  upon  education- 
al matters,  so  that  it  would  seem  as  though  the  form  of  so- 
ciety influenced  this  question  much  more  than  the  energy  of 
the  race,  which  is  rather  heightened  than  depressed  in  these 
new  countries.  The  English  Englishman  says,  "  If  I  Bend 
Dick  to  a  good  school,  and  scrape  up  money  enough  to  put 
him  into  a  profession,  even  if  he  don't  make  much,  at  least 
lie'll  be  a  gentleman."  The  Australian  or  democratic  En- 
glishman  says,  "  Tom  must  have  good  schooling,  and  must 
make  the  most  of  it ;  but  I'll  not  have  him  knocking  about 
in  broadcloth,  and  earning  nothing  ;  so  no  profession  for 
him ;  but  let  him  make  money  like  me,  and  mayhap  get  a 
few  acres  more  land." 

Making  allowance  for  the  thinness  of  population  in  the 
bush,  education  in  Victoria  is  extremely  general  among  the 
children,  and  is  directed  by  local  committees  with  success, 
although  the  members  of  the  boards  are  often  themselves 
destitute  of  all  knowledge  except  that  which  tells  them  that 
education  will  do  their  children  good.  Mr.  Geary,  an  in- 
spector of  schools,  told  the  commissioners  that  he  had  ex- 
amined one  school  where  not  a  single  member  of  the  local 
committee  could  write;  but  these  immigrant  fathers  do 
their  duty  honestly  toward  the  children  for  all  their  igno- 
rance, and  there  is  every  chance  that  the  schools  will  grow 
and  grow  until  their  influence  on  behalf  of  freedom  becomes 
as  marked  in  Victoria  as  it  ever  has  been  in  Massachusetts. 
Education  has  a  great  advantage  in  countries  where  political 
rights  are  widely  extended :  in  the  colonies,  as  in  America, 
there  is  a  spirit  of  political  life  astir  throughout  the  country, 
and  newspapers  and  public  meetings  continue  an  education 
throughout  life  which  in  England  ceases  at  twelve,  and  gives 
place  to  driving  sheep  to  paddocks,  and  shouting  at  rooks 
in  a  wheat-field. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  state  of  the  Victorian  schools  to 
show  what  will  be  the  type  of  the  next  generation,  but  there 
are  many  reasons  for  believing  that  the  present  disorganiza- 
tion of  colonial  society  will  only  cease  with  the  attainment 
of  complete  democracy  or  absolute  equality  of  conditions, 
which  must  be  produced  by  the  already  democratic  institu- 
tions in  a  little  more  than  a  generation.     The  squatter  class 


318  Greater  Britain. 

will  disappear  as  agriculture  drives  sheep-farming  from  the 
field,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  town  democracy  will  adopt 
a  tone  of  manly  independence,  instead  of  one  of  brag  and 
bluster,  when  education  makes  them  that  which  at  present 
they  are  not — the  equals  of  the  wealthy  farmers. 

It  has  been  justly  pointed  out  that  one  of  the  worst  dan- 
gers of  democracy  is  the  crushing  influence  of  public  opinion 
upon  individuality,  and  many  who  have  written  upon  Ameri- 
ca have  assumed  that  the  tendency  has  already  shown  it- 
self there.  I  had  during  my  stay  in  the  United  States  ar- 
rived at  the  contrary  opinion,  and  come  to  believe  that  in 
no  country  in  the  world  is  eccentricity,  moral  and  religious, 
so  ripe  as  in  America,  in  no  country  individuality  more 
strong;  but,  ascribing  to  intermixture  of  foreign  blood  this 
apparently  abnormal  departure  from  the  assumed  democrat- 
ic shape  of  society,  I  looked  forward  to  the  prospect  of  see- 
ing the  overwhelming  force  of  the  opinion  of  the  majority 
exhibited  in  all  its  hideousness  in  the  democratic  colonies. 
I  was  as  far  from  discovering  the  monster  as  I  had  been  in 
America,  for  I  soon  found  that,  although  there  may  be  little 
intellectual  unrest  in  Australia,  there  is  marvellous  variety 
of  manners. 

There  is  in  our  colonies  no  trace  of  that  multiplication  of 
creeds  which  characterizes  America,  and  which  is  said  to  be 
everywhere  the  result  of  the  abolition  of  Establishments. 
In  Victoria  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  whites  belong  to  either 
Episcopalians,  Catholics,  or  Presbyterians,  and  almost  all  of 
the  remainder  to  the  well-known  English  Churches ;  nothing 
is  heard  of  such  sects  as  the  hundreds  that  have  sprung  up 
in  New  England — Hopkinsians,  Universalists,  Osgoodites, 
Pogerenes,  Come-outers,  Non-resistants,  and  the  like.  The 
Australian  democrat  likes  to  pray  as  his  father  prayed  be- 
fore him,  and  is  strongly  conservative  in  his  ecclesiastic  af- 
fairs. It  may  be  the  absence  in  Australia  of  enthusiastic  re- 
ligion which  accounts  for  the  want  among  the  country-folk 
of  the  peculiar  gentleness  of  manner  which  distinguishes  the 
farmer  in  America.  '  Climate  may  have  its  effect  upon  the 
voice;  the  influence  of  the  Puritan  and  Quaker  in  the  early 
history  of  the  thirteen  States,  when  manners  were  moulded 
and  the  national  life  shaped  for  good  or  harm,  may  have  per- 


Colonial  Democracy.  319 

manently  aft'ected  the  descendants  of  the  early  settlers;  but 
everywhere  in  America  I  noticed  that  the  most  perfect  dig- 
nity and  repose  of  manner  was  found  in  districts  where  the 
passionate  religious  systems  had  their  strongest  hold. 

There  is  no  trace  in  the  colonies  at  present  of  that  love 
for  general  ideas  which  takes  America  away  from  England 
in  philosophy,  and  sets  her  with  the  Latin  and  Celtic  races 
on  the  side  of  France.  The  tendency  is  said  to  follow  on 
democracy,  but  it  would  be  better  said  that  democracy  is 
itself  one  of  these  general  ideas.  Democracy  in  the  colonies 
is  at  present  an  accident,  and  nothing  more ;  it  rests  upon 
no  basis  of  reasoning,  but  upon  a  fact.  The  first  settlers 
were  active,  bustling  men  of  fairly  even  rank  of  wealth,  none 
of  whom  could  brook  the  leadership  of  any  other.  The  only 
way  out  of  the  difficulty  was  the  adoption  of  the  rule  "  All 
of  us  to  be  equal,  and  the  majority  to  govern  ;"  but  there 
is  no  conception  of  the  nature  of  democracy,  as  the  unfortu- 
nate Chinese  have  long  since  discovered.  The  colonial  dem- 
ocrats understand  "  democracy  "  as  little  as  the  party  which 
takes  the  name  in  the  United  States;  but  there  is  at  present 
no  such  party  in  the  colonies  as  the  great  Republican  party 
of  America. 

Democracy  can  not  always  remain  an  accident  in  Aus- 
tralia :  where  once  planted,  it  never  fails  to  fix  its  roots ;  but 
even  in  America  its  growth  has  been  extremely  slow.  There 
is  at  present  in  Victoria  and  New  South  Wales  a  general 
admission  among  the  men  of  the  existence  of  equality  of  con- 
ditions, together  with  a  perpetual  rebellion  on  the  part  of 
their  wives  to  defeat  democracy,  and  to  re-introduce  the  old 
"  colonial  court "  society  and  resulting  class  divisions.  The 
consequence  of  this  distinction  is  that  the  women  are  mostly 
engaged  in  elbowing  their  way;  while  among  their  hus- 
bands there  is  no  such  thing  as  the  pretending  to  a  style,  a 
culture,  or  a  wealth  that  the  pretender  does  not  possess,  for 
the  reason  that  no  male  colonist  admits  the  possibility  of  the 
existence  of  a  social  superior.  Like  the  American  "  demo- 
crat," the  Australian  will  admit  that  there  may  be  any  num- 
ber of  grades  below  him,  so  long  as  you  allow  that  he  is  at 
the  top :  but  no  republican  can  be  stancher  in  the  matter 
of  his  own  equality  with  the  best. 


320  Greater  Britain. 

There  is  no  sign  that  in  Australia  any  more  than  in  Amer- 
ica there  will  spring  up  a  centre  of  opposition  to  the  dom- 
inant majority ;  but  there  is  as  little  evidence  that  the  ma- 
jority will  even  unwittingly  abuse  its  power.  It  is  the  fash- 
ion to  say  that  for  a  State  to  be  intellectually  great  and  no- 
ble there  must  be  Avithin  it  a  nucleus  of  opposition  to  the 
dominant  principles  of  the  time  and  place,  and  that  the  best 
and  noblest  minds,  the  intellects  the  most  seminal,  have  in- 
variably belonged  to  men  who  formed  part  of  such  a  group. 
It  may  be  doubted  whether  this  assumed  necessity  for  oppo- 
sition to  the  public  will  is  not  characteristic  of  a  terribly  im- 
perfect state  of  society  and  government.  It  is  chiefly  be- 
cause the  world  has  never  had  experience  of  a  national  life 
at  once  throbbing  with  the  pulse  of  the  whole  people,  and 
completely  tolerant  not  only  in  law  but  in  opinion  of  senti- 
ments the  most  divergent  from  the  views  of  the  majority — 
firm  in  the  pursuit  of  truths  already  grasped,  but  ready  to 
seize  with  avidity  upon  new ;  gifted  with  a  love  of  order, 
yet  prepared  to  fit  itself  to  shifting  circumstances — that  men 
continue  to  look  with  complacency  upon  the  enormous  waste 
of  intellectual  power  that  occurs  when  a  germ  of  truth  such 
as  that  contained  in  the  doctrines  of  the  Puritans  finds  de- 
velopment and  acceptance  only  after  centuries  have  passed. 

Australia  will  start  unclogged  by  slavery  to  try  this  ex- 
periment for  the  world. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

PROTECTION. 

The  greatest  of  all  democratic  stumbling-blocks  is  said  to 
be  Protection. 

"  Encourage  native  industry  !"  the  colonial  shop-keepers 
write  up  ;  "  Show  your  patriotism,  and  buy  colonial  goods  !" 
is  painted  in  huge  letters  on  a  shop-front  at  Castlemaine. 
In  England  some  unscrupulous  traders,  we  are  told,  write 
"  From  Paris  "  over  their  English  goods,  but  such  dishonesty 
in  Victoria  takes  another  shape  ;  there  we  have  "  Warranted 
colonial  made"  placed  over  imported  wares,  for  many  will 
pay  a  higher  price  for  a  colonial  product  confessedly  not  more 


Protection.  321 

than  equal  to  the  foreign,  such  is  the  rage  for  Native  Indus- 
try, and  the  hatred  of  the  "  Antipodean  doctrine  of  Free 
Trade." 

Many  former  colonists  who  live  at  home  persuade  them- 
selves, and  unfortunately  persuade  also  the  public  in  England, 
that  the  Protectionists  are  weak  in  the  colonies.  So  far  is 
this  from  being  the  case  in  either  Victoria  or  New  South 
Wales,  that  in  the  former  colony  I  found  that  in  the  Lower 
House  the  Free  Traders  formed  but  three-elevenths  of  the 
Assembly,  and  in  New  South  Wales  the  pastoral  tenants  of 
the  Crown  may  be  said  to  stand  alone  in  their  support  of 
Free  Trade.  Some  of  the  squatters  go  so  far  as  to  declare 
that  none  of  the  public  men  of  the  colonies  really  believe  in 
the  advantages  of  Protection,  but  that  they  dishonestly  ac- 
cept the  principle,  and  undertake  to  act  upon  it  when  in  of- 
fice, in  order  to  secure  the  votes  of  an  ignorant  majority  of 
laborers,  who  are  themselves  convinced  that  Protection  means 
high  wages. 

It  would  seem  as  though  we  Free  Traders  had  become 
nearly  as  bigoted  in  favor  of  Free  Trade  as  our  former  op- 
ponents were  in  favor  of  Protection.  Just  as  they  used  to 
say  "  We  are  right ;  why  argue  the  question  ?"  so  now,  in 
face  of  the  support  of  Protection  by  all  the  greatest  minds 
in  America,  all  the  first  statesmen  of  the  Australias,  we  tell 
the  New  England  and  the  Australian  politicians  that  we  will 
not  discuss  Protection  with  them,  because  there  can  be  no 
two  minds  about  it  among  men  of  intelligence  and  education. 
We  will  hear  no  defense  of  "  national  lunacy,*5  we  say. 

If,  putting  aside  our  prejudices,  we  consent  to  argue  with 
an  Australian  or  American  Protectionist,  Ave  find  ourselves 
in  difficulties.  All  the  ordinary  arguments  against  the  com- 
pelling people  by  Act  of  Parliament  to  consume  a  dearer  or 
inferior  article  are  admitted  as  soon  as  they  are  urged.  If 
you  attempt  to  prove  that  Protection  is  bolstered  up  by  those 
whose  private  interests  it  subserves,  you  ai'e  shown  the  shrewd 
Australian  diggers  and  the  calculating  Western  farmers  in 
America — men  whose  pocket  interest  is  wholly  opposed  to 
Protection,  and  who-yet,  almost  to  a  man,  support  it.  A  dig- 
ger at  Ballarat  defended  Protection  to  me  in  this  way :  he 
said  he  knew  that  under  a  protective  tariff  he  had  to  pay 

O  2 


322  Greater  Britain. 

dearer  than  would  otherwise  be  the  case  for  his  jacket  and 
his  moleskin  trowsers,  but  that  he  preferred  to  do  this,  as  by 
so  doing  he  aided  in  building  up  in  the  colony  such  trades 
as  the  making-up  of  clothes,  in  which  his  brother  and  other 
men  physically  too  weak  to  be  diggers  could  gain  an  honest 
living.  In  short,  the  self-denying  Protection  of  the  Austra- 
lian diggers  is  of  the  character  of  that  which  would  be  ac- 
corded to  the  glaziers  of  a  town  by  the  citizen  if  they  broke 
their  windows  to  find  their  fellow  -  townsmen  work:  "We 
know  we  lose,  but  men  must  live,"  they  say.  At  the  same 
time  they  deny  that  the  loss  will  be  enduring.  The  digger 
tells  you  that  he  should  not  mind  a  continuing  pocket  loss, 
but  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  this,  which  in  an  old  country 
would  be  pocket  loss,  in  a  new  country  such  as  his  only  comes 
to  this — that  it  forms  a  check  on  immigration.  Wages  be- 
ing 5s.  a  day  in  Victoria  and  3s.  a  day  in  England,  workmen 
would  naturally  flock  into  Victoria  from  England  until  wages 
in  Melbourne  fell  to  3s.  Gel  or  4s.  Here  comes  in  prohibition, 
and  by  increasing  the  cost  of  living  in  Victoria,  and  cutting 
into  the  Australian  handicraftsman's  margin  of  luxuries,  di- 
minishes the  temptation  to  immigration,  and  consequently 
the  influx  itself. 

The  Western  farmers  in  America,  I  have  heard,  defend 
Protection  upon  far  wider  grounds  :  they  admit  that  Free 
Trade  would  conduce  to  the  most  rapid  possible  peopling  of 
their  country  with  foreign  immigrants  ;  but  this,  they  say,  is 
an  eminently  undesirable  conclusion.  They  prefer  to  pay  a 
heavy  tax  in  the  increased  price  of  every  thing  they  consume, 
and  in  the  greater  cost  of  labor,  rather  than  see  their  coun- 
try denationalized  by  a  rush  of  Irish  or  Germans,  or  their 
political  institutions  endangered  by  a  still  further  increase 
in  the  size  and  power  of  New  York.  One  old  fellow  said  to 
me,  "I  don't  want  the  Americans  in  1900  to  be  200  millions, 
but  I  want  them  to  be  happy." 

The  American  Protectionists  point  to  the  danger  that 
their  countrymen  would  run  unless  town  kept  pace  with 
country  population.  Settlers  would  pour  off  to  the  West,  and 
drain  the  juices  of  the  fertile  land  by  cropping  it  year  after 
year,  without  fallow,  without  manure,  and  then,  as  the  land 
became  in  a  few  years  exhausted,  would  have  nowhere  whith- 


Protection.  323 

cr  to  turn  to  find  the  fertilizers  which  the  soil  would  need. 
Were  they  to  depend  upon  agriculture  alone,  they  would 
sweep  in  a  wave  across  the  land,  leaving  behind  them  a  worn- 
out,  depopulated,  jungle-covered  soil,  open  to  future  settle- 
ment, when  its  lauds  should  have  recovered  their  fertility, 
by  some  other  and  more  provident  race.  The  coast-lands  of 
most  ancient  countries  are  exhausted,  densely  bushed,  and 
uninhabited.  In  this  fact  lies  the  power  of  our  sailor  race ; 
crossing  the  seas,  we  occupy  the  coasts,  and  step  by  step 
work  our  way  into  the  upper  country,  where  we  should  not 
have  attempted  to  show  ourselves  had  the  ancient  population 
resisted  us  upon  the  shores.  In  India,  in  Ceylon,  we  met  the 
hardy  race  of  the  highlands  and  interior  only  after  we  had 
already  fixed  ourselves  upon  the  coast,  with  a  safe  basis  for 
our  supply.  The  fate  that  these  countries  have  met  is  that 
which  colonists  expect  to  be  their  own,  unless  the  protective 
system  be  carried  out  in  its  entirety.  In  like  manner  the 
Americans  point  to  the  ruin  of  Virginia,  and  if  you  urge 
"Slavery,"  answer,  "  Slavery  is  but  agriculture." 

Those  who  speak  of  the  selfishness  of  the  Protectionists  as 
a  whole  can  never  have  taken  the  trouble  to  examine  into 
the  arguments  by  which  Protection  is  supported  in  Australia 
and  America.  In  these  countries  Protection  is  no  mere  na- 
tional delusion;  it  is  a  system  deliberately  adopted  with 
open  eyes  as  one  conducive  to  the  country's  welfare,  in  spite 
of  objections  known  to  all,  in  spite  of  pocket  losses  that  come 
home  to  all.  If  it  be,  as  we  in  England  believe,  a  folly,  it  is 
at  all  events  a  sublime  one,  full  of  self-sacrifice,  illustrative 
of  a  certain  nobility  in  the  national  heart.  The  Australian 
diggers  and  Western  farmers  in  America  are  setting  a  grand 
example  to  the  world  of  self-sacrifice  for  a  national  object ; 
hundreds  and  thousands  of  rough  men  are  content  to  live — 
they  and  their  families — upon  less  than  they  might  other- 
wise enjoy,  in  order  that  the  condition  of  the  mass  of  their 
countrymen  may  continue  raised  above  that  of  their  brother 
toilers  in  Old  England.  Their  manufactures  are  beginning 
now  to  stand  alone,  but  hitherto,  without  Protection,  the 
Americans  would  have  had  no  cities  but  sea-ports.  By  pict- 
uring to  ourselves  England  dependent  upon  the  city  of  Lon- 
don, upon  Liverpool,  and  Hull,  and  Bristol,  we  shall  see  the 


32-i  Greater  Britain. 

necessity  the  Western  men  arc  now  under  of  setting  off  Pitts- 
burg against  New  York  and  Philadelphia.  In  short,  the 
tendency,  according  to  the  Western  farmers,  of  Free  Trade, 
in  the  early  stages  of  a  country's  existence,  is  to  promote 
universal  centralization,  to  destroy  local  centres  and  the 
commerce  they  create,  to  so  tax  the  farmer  with  the  cost  of 
transport  to  distant  markets  that  he  must  grow  wheat  and 
corn  continuously,  and  can  not  but  exhaust  his  soil.  With 
markets  so  distant,  the  richest  forest-lands  are  not  worth 
clearing,  and  settlement  sweeps  over  the  country,  occupying 
the  poorer  lands,  and  then  abandoning  them  once  more. 

Protection  in  the  colonies  and  America  is  to  a  great  de- 
gree a  revolt  against  steam.  Steam  is  making  the  world  all 
one ;  steam  "  corrects "  differences  in  the  price  of  labor. 
When  steam  brings  all  races  into  competition  with  each 
other  the  cheaper  races  will  extinguish  the  dearer,  till  at  last 
some  one  people  will  inhabit  the  whole  earth.  Coal  remains 
the  only  power,  as  it  will  probably  always  be  cheaper  to 
carry  the  manufactured  goods  than  to  carry  the  coal. 

Time  after  time  I  have  heard  the  Western  farmers  draw 
imaginary  pictures  of  the  state  of  America  if  Free  Trade 
should  gain  the  day,  and  ask  of  what  avail  it  is  to  say  that 
Free  Trade  and  free  circulation  of  people  are  profitable  to 
the  pocket,  if  they  destroy  the  national  existence  of  America  ; 
what  good  to  point  out  the  gain  of  weight  to  their  purses, 
in  the  face  of  the  destruction  of  their  religion,  their  language, 
and  their  Saxon  institutions. 

One  of  the  greatest  of  the  thinkers  of  America  defended 
Protection  to  me  on  the  following  grounds  :  That  without 
Protection  America  could  at  present  have  but  icw  and  limit- 
ed manufactures.  That  a  nation  can  not  properly  be  said  to 
exist  as  such  unless  she  has  manufactures  of  many  kinds  ; 
for  men  are  born,  some  with  a  turn  to  agriculture,  some  with 
a  turn  to  mechanics ;  and  if  you  force  the  mechanic-by-na- 
ture to  become  a  farmer  he  will  make  a  bad  farmer,  and  the 
nation  will  lose  the  advantage  of  all  his  power  and  invention. 
That  the  whole  of  the  possible  employments  of  the  human 
race  are  in  a  measure  necessary  employments — necessary  to 
the  making  up  of  a  nation.  That  every  concession  to  Free 
Trade  cuts  out  of  all  chance  of  action  some  of  the  faculties 


Protection.  325 

of  the  American  national  mind,  and,  in  so  doing,  weakens 
and  debases  it.  That  each  and  every  class  of  workers  is  of 
such  importance  to  the  country  that  we  must  make  any  sacri- 
fice necessary  to  maintain  them  in  full  work.  "  The  national 
mind  is  manifold,"  he  said ;  "  and  if  you  do  not  keep  up  ev- 
ery branch  of  employment  in  every  district  you  waste  the  na- 
tional force.  If  we  were  to  remain  a  purely  agricultural  peo- 
ple land  would  fall  into  fewer  and  fewer  hands,  and  our  peo- 
ple become  more  and  more  brutalized  as  the  years  rolled  on." 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  Protection  is  entirely  de- 
fended upon  these  strange  new  grounds.  "Save  us  from 
the  pauper-labor  of  Europe,"  is  the  most  recent  as  well  as 
the  oldest  of  Protectionist  cries.  The  Australians  and  Amer- 
icans say,  that  by  working  women  at  Is.  a  day  in  the  mines 
in  Wales,  and  by  generally  degrading  all  laborers  under  the 
rank  of  highly-skilled  artisans,  the  British  keep  wages  so  low 
that,  in  spite  of  the  cost  of  carriages,  they  can  almost  invari- 
bly  undersell  the  colonists  and  Americans  in  American  and 
Australian  markets.  This  state  of  degradation  and  poverty 
nothing  can  force  them  to  introduce  into  their  own  countries, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  they  consider  manufactures  necessa- 
ry for  the  national  purpose  alluded  to  before.  The  alterna- 
tive is  Protection. 

The  most  unavoidable  of  all  the  difficulties  of  Protection 
— namely,  that  no  human  government  can  ever  be  trusted 
to  adjust  protective  taxation  without  corruption — is  no  ob- 
jection to  the  Prohibition  which  the  "Western  Protectionists 
demand.  The  New  Englanders  say,  "  Let  us  meet  the  En- 
glish on  fair  terms ;"  the  AVestern  men  say  that  they  will 
not  meet  them  at  all.  Some  of  the  New  York  Protectionists 
declare  that  their  object  is  merely  the  fostering  of  American 
manufactures  until  they  are  able  to  stand  alone,  the  United 
States  not  having  at  present  reached  the  point  which  had 
been  attained  by  other  nations  when  they  threw  Protection 
to  the  winds.  Such  halting  Protectionists  as  these  manu- 
facturers find  no  sympathy  in  Australia  or  the  West,  al- 
though the  highest  of  all  Protectionists  look  forward  to  the 
distant  time  when,  local  centres  being  everywhere  establish- 
ed, customs  will  be  abolished  on  all  sides,  and  mankind  form 
one  family. 


326  Greater  Britain. 

The  chief  tiling  to  be  borne  in  mind  in  discussing  Protec- 
tion with  an  Australian  or  an  American  is  that  he  never 
thinks  of  denying  that  under  Protection  he  pays  a  higher 
price  for  his  goods  than  he  would  if  he  bought  them  from  us, 
and  that  he  admits  at  once  that  he  temporarily  pays  a  tax 
of  15  or  20  per  cent,  upon  every  thing  he  buys  in  order  to 
help  set  his  country  on  the  road  to  national  unity  and  ulti- 
mate wealth.  Without  Protection,  the  American  tells  you, 
there  will  be  commercial  New  York,  sugar-growing  Louisi- 
ana, the  corn-growing  North-west,  but  no  America.  Pro- 
tection alone  can  give  him  a  united  country.  When  we  talk 
about  things  being  to  the  advantage  or  disadvantage  of  a 
country  the  American  Protectionist  asks  what  you  mean. 
Admitting  that  all  you  say  against  Protection  may  be  true, 
he  says  that  he  had  sooner  see  America  supporting  a  hun- 
dred millions  independent  of  the  remainder  of  the  world  than 
two  hundred  millions  dependent  for  clothes  upon  the  British. 
"  You,  on  the  other  hand,"  he  says,  "  would  prefer  our  cus- 
tom. How  can  we  discuss  the  question?  The  difference 
between  us  is  radical,  and  we  have  no  base  on  which  to 
build." 

It  is  a  common  doctrine  in  the  colonies  of  England  that 
a  nation  can  not  be  called  "  independent "  if  it  has  to  cry 
out  to  another  for  supplies  of  necessaries ;  that  true  nation- 
al existence  is  first  attained  when  the  country  becomes  ca- 
pable of  supplying  to  its  own  citizens  those  goods  without 
which  they  can  not  exist  in  the  state  of  comfort  which  they 
have  already  reached.  Political  is  apt  to  follow  upon  com- 
mercial dependency,  they  say. 

The  question  of  Protection  is  bound  up  with  the  wider 
one  of  whether  we  are  to  love  our  fellow-subjects,  our  race, 
or  the  world  at  large ;  whether  we  are  to  pursue  our  coun- 
try's good  at  the  expense  of  other  nations  ?  There  is  a 
growing  belief  in  England  that  the  noblest  philosophy  is  to 
deny  the  existence  of  the  moral  right  to  benefit  ourselves  by 
harming  others  ;  that  love  of  mankind  must  in  time  replace 
love  of  race  as  that  has  in  part  replaced  narrow  patriotism 
and  love  of  self.  It  would  seem  that  our  Free  Trade  system 
lends  itself  better  to  these  wide  modern  sympathies  than 
does  Protection.    P*i  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  argued  that, 


Protection.  827 

if  every  State  consults  the  good  of  its  own  citizens,  we  shall, 
by  the  action  of  all  nations,  obtain  the  desired  happiness  of 
the  whole  world,  and  this  with  rapidity,  from  the  reason 
that  every  country  understands  its  own  interests  better 
than  it  does  those  of  its  neighbor.  As  a  rule,  the  colonists 
hold  that  they  should  not  protect  themselves  against  the 
sister-colonies,  but  only  against  the  outer  world  ;  and  while 
I  was  in  Melbourne  an  arrangement  was  made  with  respect 
to  the  border  customs  between  Victoria  and  New  South 
Wales ;  but  this  is  at  present  the  only  step  that  has  been 
taken  toward  intercolonial  Free  Trade. 

It  is  passing  strange  that  Victoria  should  be  noted  for 
the  eagerness  with  which  her  people  seek  Protection.  Pos- 
sessed of  little  coal,  they  appear  to  be  attempting  artificially 
to  create  an  industry  which,  owing  to  this  sad  lack  of  fuel, 
must  languish  from  the  moment  that  it  is  let  alone.  Sidney 
coal  sells  in  Melbourne  at  thirty  shillings  a  ton  ;  at  the  pit's 
mouth  at  Newcastle,  New  South  Wales,  it  fetches  only  seven 
or  eight  shillings.  With  regard,  however,  to  the  making- 
up  of  native  produce,  the  question  in  the  case  of  Victoria  is 
merely  this :  Is  it  cheaper  to  carry  the  wool  to  the  coal, 
and  then  the  woolen  goods  back  again,  than  to  carry  the 
coal  to  the  wool  ?  and  as  long  as  Victoria  can  continue  to 
export  wheat,  so  that  the  coal-ships  may  not  want  freight, 
wool  manufactures  may  prosper  in  Victoria. 

The  Victorians  naturally  deny  that  the  cost  of  coal  has 
much  to  do  with  the  question.  The  French  manufacturers, 
they  point  out,  with  dearer  coal,  but  with  cheaper  labor,  have 
in  many  branches  of  trade  beaten  the  English  out  of  com- 
mon markets,  but  then  under  Protection  there  is  no  chance 
of  cheap  labor  in  Victoria. 

Writing  for  the  Englishmen  of  Old  England,  it  is  not  nec- 
essary for  me  to  defend  Free  Trade  by  any  arguments.  As 
far  as  we  in  our  island  are  concerned,  it  is  so  manifestly  to 
the  pocket  interest  of  almost  all  of  us,  and  at  the  same  time, 
on  account  of  the  minuteness  of  our  territory,  so  little  dan- 
gerous politically,  that  for  Britain  there  can  be  no  danger  of 
a  deliberate  relapse  into  Protection,  although  Ave  have  but 
little  right  to  talk  about  Free  Trade  so  long  as  we  continue 
our  enormous  subsidies?  to  the  Cunard  liners. 


328  Greater  Britain. 

The  American  argument  in  favor  of  Prohibition  is  in  the 
main,  it  will  be  seen,  political,  the  economical  objections  be- 
ing admitted,  but  outweighed.  Our  action  in  the  matter  of 
our  postal  contracts,  and  in  the  case  of  the  factory  acts,  at 
all  events  shows  that  we  are  not  ourselves  invariably  averse 
to  distinguish  between  the  political  and  the  economical  as- 
pect of  certain  questions. 

My  duty  has  been  to  chronicle  what  is  said  and  thought 
upon  the  matter  in  our  various  plantations.  One  thing  at 
least  is  clear — that  even  if  the  opinions  I  have  recorded  be 
as  ridiculous  when  applied  to  Australia  or  America  as  they 
would  be  when  applied  to  England,  they  are  not  supported 
by  a  selfish  clique,  but  rest  upon  the  generosity  and  self-sac- 
rifice of  a  majority  of  the  population. 


CHAPTER  VTI. 

LABOK. 

Side  by  side  with  the  unselfish  Protectionism  of  the  dig- 
gers, there  flourishes  among  the  artisans  of  the  Australias  a 
self-interested  desire  for  non-intercourse  with  the  outside 
world. 

In  America,  the  working-men,  themselves  almost  without 
exception  immigrants,  though  powerful  in  the  various  States 
from  holding  the  balance  of  parties,  have  never  as  yet  been 
able  to  make  their  voices  heard  in  the  Federal  Congress.  In 
the  chief  Australian  colonies,  on  the  other  hand,  the  artisans 
have,  more  than  any  other  class,  the  possession  of  political 
power.  Throughout  the  world  the  grievance  of  the  working- 
classes  lies  in  the  fact  that,  while  trade  and  profits  have  in- 
creased enormously  within  the  last  few  years,  true  as  dis- 
tinguished from  nominal  wages  have  not  risen.  It  is  even 
doubtful  whether  the  American  or  British  handicraftsman 
can  now  live  in  such  comfort  as  he  could  make  sure  of  a  few 
years  back :  it  is  certain  that  agricultural  laborers  in  the 
south  of  England  are  worse  off*  than  they  were  ten  years  ago, 
although  the  depreciation  of  gold  prevents  us  from  accurate- 
ly gauging  their  true  position.  In  Victoria  and  New  South 
Wales,  and  in  the  States  of  Wisconsin,  Illinois,  and  Missouri, 


Labor.  829 

where  the  artisans  possess  some  share  of  power,  they  have  set ' 
about  the  attempt  to  remedy  by  law  the  grievance  under 
which  they  suffer.  In  the  American  States,  where  the  sup- 
pression of  immigration  seems  almost  impossible,  their  inter- 
ference  takes  the  shape  of  eight-hour  bills  and  exclusion  of 
colored  laborers.  There  is  no  trades-union  in  America  which 
will  admit  to  membership  a  Chinaman,  or  even  a  mulatto.  In 
Victoria  and  New  South  Wales,  however,  it  is  not  difficult 
quietly  to  put  a  check  upon <  the  importation  of  foreign  labor. 
The  vast  distance  from  Europe  makes  the  unaided  immigra- 
tion of  artisans  extremely  rare,  and  since  the  democrats  have 
been  in  power  the  funds  for  assisted  immigration  have  been 
withheld,  and  the  Chinese  influx  all  but  forbidden,  while 
manifestoes  against  the  ordinary  European  immigration  have 
repeatedly  been  published  at  Sydney  by  the  Council  of  the 
Associated  Trades. 

The  Sydney  operatives  have  always  taken  a  leading  part 
in  opposition  to  immigration,  from  the  time  when  they  found- 
ed the  Anti-transportation  Committee  up  to  the  present  day. 
In  1847  a  natural  and  proper  wish  to  prevent  the  artificial 
depression  of  wages  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  anti-transporta- 
tion movement,  although  the  arguments  made  use  of  in  the 
petition  to  the  queen  were  of  the  most  general  character,  and 
Sydney  mechanics,  many  of  them  free  immigrants  themselves, 
say  that  there  is  no  difference  of  principle  between  the  intro- 
duction of  free  or  assisted  immigrants  and  that  of  convicts. 

If  we  look  merely  to  the  temporary  results  of  the  policy 
of  the  Australian  artisans  Ave  shall  find  it  hard  to  deny  that 
their  acts  are  calculated  momentarily  to  increase  their  ma- 
terial prosperity ;  so  far  they  may  be  selfish,  but  they  are 
not  blind.  Admitting  that  wages  depend  on  the  ratio  of 
capital  to  population,  the  Australians  assert  that,  with  them, 
population  increases  faster  than  capital,  and  that  hindering 
immigration  will  restore  the  balance.  Prudential  checks  on 
population  are  useless,  they  say,  in  face  of  Irish  immigration. 
At  the  same  time,  it  is  clear  that,  from  the  discouragement 
of  immigration  and  limitation  to  eight  hours  of  the  daily  toil, 
there  results  an  exceptional  scarcity  of  labor,  which  cramps 
the  development  of  the  country,  and  causes  a  depression  in 
trade  which  must  soon  diminish  the  wasre-fund,  and  react 


330  Greater  Britain. 

upon  the  working-men.  It  is  unfortunately  the  fact  that 
colonial  artisans  do  not  sufficiently  bear  in  mind  the  distinc- 
tion between  real  and  nominal  wages,  but  are  easily  caught 
by  the  show  of  an  extra  few  shillings  a  week,  even  though 
the  purchasing  power  of  each  shilling  be  diminished  by  the 
change.  When  looked  into,  "  higher  wages  "  often  mean 
that  the  laborer,  instead  of  starving  upon  ten  shilings  a  week, 
is  to  starve  upon  twenty. 

As  regards  the  future,  contrasted  with  the  temporary  con- 
dition of  the  Australian  laborer,  there  is  no  disguising  the 
fact  that  mere  exclusion  of  immigration  will  not  in  the  long 
run  avail  him.  It  might,  of  course,  be  urged  that  immigra- 
tion is,  even  in  America,  a  small  matter  by  the  side  of  the 
natural  increase  of  the  people,  and  that  to  shutout  the  immi- 
grant is  but  one  of  many  checks  to  population ;  but  in  Aus- 
tralia the  natural  increase  is  not  so  great  as  in  a  young  coun- 
try might  be  expected.  The  men  so  largely  outnumber  the 
women  in  Australia  that  even  early  marriages  and  large  fami- 
lies can  not  make  the  birth-rate  very  high,  and  fertile  land 
being  at  present  still  to  be  obtained  at  first  hand,  the  new 
agricultural  districts  swallow  up  the  natural  increase  of  the 
population.  Still  important  as  is  immigration  at  this  moment, 
ultimately  through  the  influx  of  women — to  which  the  dem- 
ocrats are  not  opposed — or,  more  slowly,  by  the  effort  of 
nature  to  restore  the  balance  of  the  sexes,  the  rate  of  natural 
increase  will  become  far  greater  in  Australia.  Ultimately, 
there  can  be  no  doubt,  if  the  Australian  laborer  continues  to 
retain  his  present  standard  of  comfort,  prudential  checks  upon 
the  birth  of  children  will  be  requisite  to  maintain  the  present 
ratio  of  capital  to  population. 

Owing  to  the  comparatively  high  prices  fixed  for  agricult- 
ural land  in  the  three  south-eastern  colonies  of  Australia, 
the  abundance  of  unoccupied  tracts  has  not  hitherto  had  that 
influence  on  wages  in  Australia  which  it  appears  to  have  ex- 
ercised in  America;  but  under  the  democratic  amendments 
of  the  existing  free  selection  system  wages  will  probably 
again  rise  in  the  colonies,  to  be  once  more  reduced  by  immi- 
gration, or,  if  the  democracy  gains  the  day,  more  slowly  low- 
ered by  the  natural  increase  of  the  population. 

In  places  where  competition  has  reduced  the  reward  of 


Labor.  331 

labor  to  the  lowest  amount  consistent  with  the  efficiency  of 
the  work,  compulsory  restriction  of  the  hours  of  toil  must  evi- 
dently he  an  unmixed  benefit  to  the  laborer  until  carried  to 
the  point  at  which  it  destroys  the  trade  in  which  he  is  en- 
gaged* In  America  and  Australia,  however,  where  the  labor- 
er has  a  margin  of  luxuries  which  can  be  cut  down,  and  where 
the  manufacturers  arc  still  to  some  extent  competing  with 
European  rivals,  restriction  of  hours  puts  them  at  a  disadvan- 
tage with  the  capitalists  of  the  Old  World,  and,  reducing  their 
profits,  tends  also  to  diminish  the  wage-fund,  and  ultimately 
to  decrease  the  wages  of  their  men.  The  colonial  action  in 
this  matter  may,  nevertheless,  like  all  infringements  of  gener- 
al economic  laws,  be  justified  by  proof  of  the  existence  of  a 
higher  necessity  for  breaking  than  for  adhering  to  the  rule  of 
freedom.  Our  own  factory  acts,  we  should  remember,  were 
undoubtedly  calculated  to  diminish  the  production  of  the 
country. 

Were  the  American  and  Australian  handicraftsmen  to  be- 
come sufficiently  powerful  to  combine  strict  Protection,  or 
prohibition  of  foreign  intercourse,  with  reduction  of  hours  of 
toil,  they  would  ultimately  drive  capital  out  of  their  coun- 
tries, and  either  lower  wages,  or  else  diminish  the  population 
by  checking  both  immigration  and  natural  increase.  Here, 
as  in  the  consideration  of  Protection,  we  come  to  that  bar  to 
all  discussion,  the  question,  "  What  is  a  nation's  good  ?"  It 
is  at  least  doubtful  whether  in  England  we  do  not  attach  too 
great  importance  to  the  continuance  of  nations  in  "  the  pro- 
gressive state."  Unrestricted  immigration  may  destroy  the 
literature,  the  traditions,  the  nationality  itself  of  the  invaded 
country,  and  it  is  a  question  whether  these  ideas  are  not 
worth  preserving  even  at  a  cost  of  a  few  figures  in  the  re- 
turns of  imports,  exports,  and  population.  A  country  in 
which  Free  Trade  principles  have  been  carried  to  their  utmost 
logical  development  must  be  cosmopolitan  and  nationless, 
and  for  such  a  state  of  things  to  exist  universally  without 
danger  to  civilization  the  world  is  not  yet  prepared. 

"  Know-nothingism "  in  America,  as  what  is  now  styled 
"  Native  Americanism  "  was  once  called — a  form  of  the  pro- 
test against  the  exaggeration  of  Free  Trade — was  founded 
by  handicraftsmen,  and  will  in  all  probability  find  its  main 


332  Greater  Britain. 

support  within  their  ranks  whenever  the  time  for  its  inevitable 
resuscitation  shall  arrive.  That  there  is  honest  pride  of  race 
at  the  bottom  of  the  agitation  no  one  can  doubt  who  knows 
the  history  of  the  earlier  Know-nothing  movement ;  but  class 
interest  happens  to  point  the  same  way  as  does  the  instinct 
of  the  race.  The  refusal  of  political  privileges  to  immigrants 
will  have  some  tendency  to  check  the  flow  of  immigration ; 
at  all  events,  it  will  check  the  self-assertion  of  the  immigrants. 
That  which  does  this  leaves,  too,  the  control  of  wages  more 
within  the  hands  of  actual  laborers,  and  prevents  the  Euro- 
pean laborers  of  the  eleventh  hour  coming  in  to  share  the 
heightened  wages  for  which  the  American  hands  have  struck, 
and  suffered  misery  and  want.  No  consistent  republican  can 
object  to  the  making  ten  or  twenty  years'  residence  in  the 
United  States  the  condition  for  citizenship  of  the  land. 

In  the  particular  case  of  the  Australian  colonies,  they  are 
happily  separated  from  Ireland  by  seas  so  wide  as  to  have  a 
chance  of  preserving  a  distinct  nationality  such  as  America 
can  scarcely  hope  for:  only  1500  persons  have  come  to  New 
South  Wales,  unassisted,  in  the  last  five  years.  The  burden 
of  proof  lies  upon  those  who  propose  to  destroy  the  rising 
nationality  by  assisting  the  importation  of  a  mixed  multitude 
of  negroes,  Chinamen,  Hill-coolies,  Irish,  and  Germans,  in  or- 
der that  the  imports  and  exports  of  Victoria  and  New  South 
Wales  may  be  increased,  and  that  there  may  be  a  larger 
number  of  so-called  Victorians  and  New  South  Welsh  to  live 
in  misery. 

Owing  to  the  fostering  of  immigration  by  the  aristocratic 
government,  the  population  of  Queensland  had,  in  I860,  quad- 
rupled itself  since  1860;  but,  even  were  the  other  colonies 
inclined  to  follow  the  example  of  their  northern  sister,  they 
could  not  do  so  with  success.  New  South  Wales  and  Tas- 
mania might  import  colonists  by  the  thousand,  but  they  would 
be  no  sooner  landed  than  they  would  run  to  Queensland,  or 
sail  to  the  New  Zealand  diggings,  just  as  the  "  Canadian  im- 
migrants "  flock  into  the  United  States. 

That  phase  of  the  labor  question  to  which  I  have  last  al- 
luded seems  to  shape  itself  into  the  question,  "  Shall  the 
laborer  always  and  everywhere  be  encouraged  or  permitted 
to  carry  his  labor  to  the  best  market  ?"     The  Australians 


Labor.  333 

answer  that  they  arc  willing  to  admit  that  additional  hands 
in  a  new  country  means  additional  wealth,  but  that  there  is 
but  little  good  in  our  preaching  moral  restraint  to  them  if 
European  immigration  is  to  be  encouraged,  Chinese  allowed. 
The  only  effect,  they  say,  that  self-control  can  have  is  that  of 
giving  such  children  as  they  rear  Chinamen  or  Irishmen  to 
struggle  against  instead  of  brothers.  It  is  hopeless  to  ex- 
pect that  the  Australian  workmen  will  retain  their  present 
standard  of  comfort  if  an  influx  of  dark-skinned  handicrafts- 
men is  permitted. 

Some  ten  or  even  fewer  years  ago  we  Free  Traders  of  the 
"Western  world,  first  then  coming  to  know  some  little  about 
the  kingdoms  of  the  further  East,  paused  a  moment  in  our 
daily  toil  to  lift  to  the  skies  our  hands  in  lamentation  at  the 
blind  exclusiveness  which  we  were  told  had  for  ages  past 
held  sway  within  the  council-chambers  of  Pekin.  No  words 
were  too  strong  for  our  new-found  laughing-stock  ;  China  be- 
came for  us  what  we  are  to  Parisian  journalists — a  Bceotia 
redeemed  only  by  a  certain  eccentricity  of  folly.  This  vast 
hive,  swarming  with  two  hundred  million  working  bees,  was 
said  to  find  its  interest  in  shutting  out  the  world,  punishing 
with  death  the  outgoing  and  incoming  of  the  people.  "  China 
for  the  Chinese  "  was  the  common  war-cry  of  the  rulers  and 
the  ruled  ;  "  Self-contained  has  China  been,  and  prospered ; 
self-contained  she  shall  continue,"  the  favorite  maxim  of 
their  teachers.  Nothing  could  be  conceived  nobler  than  the 
scorn  which  mingled  with  half-doubting  incredulity  and  with 
Pharisaic  thanking  of  heaven  that  we  were  not  as  they,  when 
the  blindness  of  these  outer  barbarians  of  "  Gog  and  Ma- 
gog land"  was  drawn  for  us  by  skillful  pens,  and  served  out 
with  all  the  comments  that  self-complacency  could  suggest. 
A  conversion  in  the  future  was  foretold,  however ;  this  Chi- 
nese infirmity  of  vision  was  not  to  last  forever ;  the  day  would 
come  when  Studentships  in  Political  Economy  would  be 
founded  in  Pekin,  and  Ricardo  take  the  place  of  Cou-fou-chow 
in  Thibetian  schools.  A  conversion  has  taken  place  of  late, 
but  not  that  hoped  for ;  or,  if  it  be  a  conversion  consistent 
with  the  truths  of  economic  science,  it  has  taken  a  strange 
shape.  The  wise  men  of  Canton  may  be  tempted,  perhaps, 
to  think  that  it  is  we  who  have  learned  the  wisdom  of  the 


83-4  Greater  Britain. 

sages,  and  been  brought  back  into  the  fold  of  the  great  mas- 
ter. Chinese  immigration  is  heavily  taxed  in  California; 
taxed  to  the  point  of  prohibition  in  Victoria;  and  forbidden 
under  heavy  penalties  in  Louisiana  and  other  ex-rebel  States. 

The  Chinaman  is  pushing  himself  to  the  fore  wherever  his 
presence  is  allowed.  We  find  Chinese  helmsmen  and  quar- 
termasters in  the  service  of  the  Messageries  and  Oriental 
Companies  receiving  twice  the  wages  paid  to  Indian  Lascars. 
We  hear  of  the  importation  of  Chinese  Jaborcrs  into  India  for 
railway  and  for  drainage  works.  The  Chinaman  has  great 
vitality.  Of  the  cheap  races  the  Mongol  is  the  most  pushing, 
the  likeliest  to  conquer  in  the  fight.  It  would  almost  seem 
as  though  we  were  wrong  in  our  common  .scales  of  prefer- 
ence ;  far  from  right  in  our  use  of  the  terms  "  superior"  and 
"  inferior  "  races. 

A  well-taught  white  man  can  outreason  or  can  overreach 
a  well-taught  Chinaman  or  negro.  But  under  some  climatic 
conditions  the  negro  can  outwork  the  white  man;  under  al- 
most all  conditions  the  Chinaman  can  outwork  him.  Where 
this  is  the  case,  is  it  not  the  Chinaman  or  the  negro  that 
should  be  called  the  better  man  ?  Call  him  what  we  may, 
will  he  not  prove  his  superiority  by  working  the  Englishman 
off  the  soil  ?  In  Florida  and  Mississippi  the  black  is  certain- 
ly the  better  man. 

Many  Victorians,  even  those  who  respect  and  admire  the 
Chinese,  are  in  favor  of  the  imposition  of  a  tax  upon  the  yel- 
low immigrants,  in  order  to  prevent  the  destruction  of  the 
rising  Australian  nationality.  They  fear  that  otherwise 
they  will  live  to  see  the  English  element  swamped  in  the 
Asiatic  throughout  Australia.  It  is  not  certain  that  Ave  may 
not  some  day  have  to  encounter  a  similar  danger  in  Old  En- 
gland. 

It  will  be  seen  from  the  account  thus  given  of  the  state 
of  the  labor  question  in  Australia,  that  the  colonial  handi- 
craftsmen stand  toward  those  of  the  world  in  much  the  same 
relative  position  as  that  held  by  the  members  of  a  trade-un- 
ion toward  the  other  workmen  of  the  same  trade.  The  limit- 
ation of  immigration  has  much  the  same  effects  as  the  limit- 
ation of  apprentices  in  a  single  trade  in  England.  It  is  easy 
to  say  that  the  difference  between  fellow-countryman  and 


Labor.  335 

foreigner  is  important;  that  -while  it  is  an  unfairness  to  all 
English  workmen  that  English  hatters  should  limit  appren- 
tices, it  is  not  unfair  to  English  hatters  that  Australian  hat- 
ters should  limit  their  apprentices.  For  my  own  part,  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that,  fair  or  unfair — and  we  have  no  inter- 
national moral  rule  to  decide  the  question — Ave  might  at  least 
say  to  Australia  that,  while  she  throws  upon  us  the  chief  ex- 
penses of  her  defense,  she  is  hardly  in  a  position  to  refuse  to 
aid  our  emigrants. 

Day  by  day  the  labor  question  in  its  older  aspects  becomes 
of  less  and  less  importance.  The  relationship  of  master  and 
servant  is  rapidly  dying  the  death ;  co-operative  farming  and 
industrial  partnerships  must  supersede  it  everywhere  at  no 
distant  date.  In  these  systems  we  shall  find  the  remedy 
against  the  decline  of  trade  with  which  the  English-speak- 
ing countries  of  the  earth  are  threatened. 

The  existing  system  of  labor  is  anti-democratic ;  it  is  at 
once  productive  of  and  founded  on  the  existence  of  an  aris- 
tocracy of  capital  and  a  servitude  of  workmen ;  and  our  En- 
glish democracies  can  not  afford  that  half  their  citizens 
should  be  dependent  laborers.  If  manufactures  are  to  be  con- 
sistent with  democracy  they  must  be  carried  on  in  shops  in 
which  each  man  shall  be  at  once  capitalist  and  handicrafts- 
man. Such  institutions  are  already  in  existence  in  Massa- 
chusetts, in  Illinois,  in  Pennsylvania,  and  in  Sydney ;  while 
at  Troy,  in  New  York  State,  there  is  a  great  iron-foundery 
owned  from  roof  to  floor  by  the  men  who  work  in  it.  It  is 
not  enough  that  the  workman  should  share  in  the  profits. 
The  change  which,  continuing  through  the  Middle  Ages  into 
tiie  present  century,  has  at  last  everywhere  converted  the 
relation  of  lord  and  slave  into  that  of  master  and  hireling,  is 
already  giving  place  to  the  silent  revolution  which  is  steadi- 
ly substituting  for  this  relationship  of  capital  and  labor  that 
of  a  perfect  marriage,  in  which  the  laborer  and  the  capitalist 
shall  be  one. 

Under  this  system  there  can  be  no  strikes,  no  petty  trick- 
ery, no  jealousy,  no  waste  of  time.  Each  man's  individual  in- 
terest is  coincident  with  that  of  all.  Where  the  labor  is 
that  of  a  brotherhood  the  toil  becomes  ennobled.  "Were  in- 
dustrial partnerships  a  new  device  their  inventor  would  need 


336  Greater  Britain. 

no  monument ;  his  would  be  found  in  the  future  history  of 
the  race.  As  it  is,  this  latest  advance  of  Western  civilization 
is  but  a  return  to  the  earliest  and  noblest  form  of  labor ;  the 
Arabs,  the  Don  Cossacks,  the  Maori  tribes  are  all  co-opera- 
tive farmers ;  it  is  the  mission  of  the  English  race  to  apply 
the  ancient  principle  to  manufacturers. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

"WOMAN. 


In  one  respect  Victoria  stands  at  once  sadly  behind  and 
strangely  in  advance  of  other  democratic  countries.  Wom- 
en, or  at  least  some  women,  vote  at  the  Lower  House  elec- 
tions, but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  legal  position  of  the  sex  is 
almost  as  inferior  to  that  of  man  as  it  is  in  England  or  the 
East. 

At  an  election  held  some  few  years  ago  female  rate-pay- 
ers voted  everywhere  throughout  Victoria.  Upon  examina- 
tion it  was  found  that  a  new  Registration  Act  had  directed 
the  rate-books  to  be  used  as  a  basis  for  the  preparation  of 
the  electoral  lists,  and  that  women  householders  had  been 
legally  put  on  the  register,  although  the  intention  of  the 
Legislature  was  not  expressed,  and  the  question  of  female 
voting  had  not  been  raised  during  the  debates.  Another  in- 
stance, this,  of  the  singular  way  in  which  in  truly  British 
countries  reforms  are  brought  about  by  accident,  and,  when 
once  become  facts,  are  allowed  to  stand.  There  is  no  more 
sign  of  general  adhesion  in  Australia  than  in  England  to  the 
doctrine  which  asserts  that  women,  as  well  as  men,  being 
interested  in  good  government,  should  have  a  voice  in  the 
selection  of  that  government  to  which  they  are  forced  to 
submit. 

As  far  as  concerns  their  social  position,  women  arc  as 
badly  off  in  Australia  as  in  England.  Our  theory  of  mar- 
riage—  which  has  been  tersely  explained  thus,  "The  hus- 
band and  wife  are  one,  and  the  husband  is  that  one  " — rules 
as  absolutely  at  the  antipodes  as  it  does  in  Yorkshire.  I  was 
daily  forced  to  remember  the  men  of  Kansas  and  Missouri, 
and  the  widely  different  view  they  take  of  these  matters  to 


Woman.  337 

that  of  the  Australians.  As  they  used  to  tell  me,  they  are 
impatient  of  seeing  their  women  ranked  with  "lunatics  and 
idiots  "  in  the  catalogue  of  incapacities.  They  are  unable 
to  sec  that  women  are  much  better  represented  by  their  male 
friends  than  were  the  Southern  blacks  by  their  owners  or 
overseers.  They  believe  that  the  process  of  election  would 
not  be  more  purified  by  female  emancipation  than  would  the 
character  of  the  Parliaments  elected. 

The  Kansas  people  often  say  that  if  you  were  told  that 
there  existed  in  some  ideal  country  two  great  sections  of  a 
race,  the  members  of  the  one  often  gross,  often  vicious,  often 
given  to  loud  talking,  to  swearing,  to  drinking,  spitting, 
chewing ;  not  infrequently  corrupt ;  those  of  the  other  branch, 
mild,  kind,  quiet,  pure,  devout,  with  none  of  the  habitual 
vices  of  the  first-named  sect — if  you  were  told  that  one  of 
these  branches  Avas  alone  to  elect  rulers  and  to  govern,  you 
would  at  once  say,  "  Tell  us  where  this  happy  country  is  that 
basks  in  the  rule  of  such  a  god-like  people."  "  Stop  a  min- 
ute," says  your  informant,  "it  is  the  creatures  I  described 
first — the  men — who  rule ;  the  others  are  only  women,  poor 
silly  fools — imperfect  men,  I  assure  you  ;  nothing  more." 

It  is  somewhat  the  fashion  to  say  that  the  so-called  "  ex- 
travagances "  of  the  Kansas  folk  and  other  American  West- 
ern men  arise  from  the  extraordinary  position  given  to  their 
women  by  the  disproportion  of  the  sexes.  Now  in  all  the 
Australian  colonies  the  men  vastly  outnumber  the  women, 
yet  the  disproportion  has  none  of  those  results  which  have 
been  attributed  to  it  by  some  writers  on  America.  In  New 
South  Wales  the  sexes  are  as  250,000  to  200,000,  in  Victo- 
ria 370,000  to  280,000,  in  New  Zealand  130,000  to  80,000,  in 
Queensland  60,000  to  40,000,  in  Tasmania  50,000  to  40,000, 
in  West  Australia  14,000  to  8000,  and  90,000  to  80,000  in 
South  Australia.  In  all  our  Southern  colonies  together  there 
are  a  million  of  men  to  only  three-quarters  of  a  million  of 
women;  yet  with  all  this  disproportion,  which  far  exceeds 
that  in  Western  America,  not  only  have  the  women  failed 
to  acquire  any  great  share  of  power,  political  or  social,  but 
they  are  content  to  occupy  a  position  not  relatively  superior 
to  that  held  by  them  at  home. 

The  "Sewing  Clubs"  of  the  war-time  are  at  the  bottom 

P 


338  Greater  Britain. 

of  a  good  deal  of  the  "  woman  movement "  in  America.  At 
the  time  of  greatest  need  the  ladies  of  the  Northern  States 
formed  themselves  into  associations  for  the  supply  of  lint, 
of  linen,  and  of  comforts  to  the  army  :  the  women  of  a  dis- 
trict would  meet  together  daily  in  some  large  room,  and 
sew,  and  chat  while  they  were  sewing. 

The  British  section  of  the  Teutonic  race  seems  naturally 
inclined,  through  the  operation  of  its  old  interest-begotten 
prejudices,  to  rank  women  where  Plato  placed  them  in  the 
"  Timams,"  along  with  horses  and  draught-cattle,  or  to  think 
of  them  much  as  he  did  when  he  said  that  all  the  brutes  de- 
rived their  origin  from  man  by  a  series  of  successive  degra- 
dations, of  which  the  first  was  from  man  to  woman.  There 
is,  however,  one  strong  reason  why  the  English  should,  in 
America,  have  laid  aside  their  prejudices  upon  this  point,  re- 
taining them  in  Australia,  where  the  conditions  are  not  the 
same.  Among  farming  peoples,  whose  women  do  not  work 
regularly  in  the  field,  the  woman,  to  whom  falls  the  house- 
hold and  superior  work,  is  better  ofi"  than  she  is  among  town- 
dwelling  peoples.  The  Americans  are  mainly  a  farming,  the 
Australians  and  British  mainly  a  town-dwelling  people.  The 
absence  in  all  sections  of  our  race  of  regular  woman  labor  in 
the  field  seems  to  be  a  remnant  of  the  high  estimation  in 
which  women  were  held  by  our  German  ancestry.  In  Brit- 
ain we  have,  until  the  last  few  years,  been  steadily  retro- 
grading upon  this  point. 

It  is  a  serious  question  how  far  the  natural  prejudice  of 
the  English  mind  against  the  labor  of  Avhat  we  call  "inferior 
races  "  will  be  found  to  extend  to  half  the  suj)erior  race  it- 
pelf  How  will  English  laborers  receive  the  inevitable  com- 
petition of  women  in  many  of  their  fields?  Woman  is  at 
present  starved,  if  she  works  at  all  and  does  not  rest  content 
in  dependence  upon  some  man,  by  the  terrible  lowness  of 
wages  in  every  employment  open  to  hci',  and  this  low  rate 
of  wages  is  itself  the  direct  result  of  the  fewness  of  the  oc- 
cupations which  society  allows  her.  Where  a  man  can  see 
a  hundred  crafts  in  which  he  may  engage,  a  woman  will 
perhaps  be  permitted  to  find  ten.  A  hundred  times  :is  many 
women  as  there  is  room  for  invade  each  of  this  small  num- 
ber of  employments.     In  the  Australian  labor-field  the  pros- 


Victorian  Ports.  339 

pccts  of  women  are  no  better  than  they  are  in  Europe,  and 
during  my  residence  in  Melbourne  the  Council  of  the  Asso- 
ciated Trades  passed  a  resolution  to  the  effect  that  nothing 
could  justify  the  employment  of  women  in  any  kind  of  pro- 
ductive labor. 


CHAPTER  TX. 

VICTORIAN     POETS. 

All  allowance  being  made  for  the  great  number  of  wide 
roads  for  trade,  there  is  still  a  singular  absence  of  traffic  in 
the  Melbourne  streets.  Trade  may  be  said  to  be  transacted 
only  upon  paper  in  the  city,  while  the  tallow,  grain,  and  wool 
which  form  the  basis  of  Australian  commerce  do  not  pass 
through  Melbourne,  but  skirt  it,  and  go  by  railway  to  Wil- 
liamstown,  Sandridge,  and  Geelong. 

Geelong,  once  expected  to  rival  Melbourne,  and  become 
the  first  port  of  all  Australia,  I  found  grass-grown  and  half 
deserted,  with  but  one  vessel  lying  at  her  wharf.  At  Wii- 
liamstown  a  great  fleet  of  first-class  ships  was  moored  along- 
side the  pier.  When  the  gold-find  at  Ballarat  took  place 
Geelong  rose  fast  as  the  digging  port,  but  her  citizens  chose 
to  complete  the  railway  line  to  Melbourne  instead  of  first 
opening  that  to  Ballarat,  and  so  lost  all  the  up-country  trade. 
Melbourne,  having  once  obtained  the  lead,  soon  managed  to 
control  the  Legislature,  and  grants  were  made  for  the  Echu- 
ca  Railroad,  which  tapped  the  Murray,  and  brought  the  trade 
of  Upper  Queensland  and  New  South  Wales  down  to  Mel- 
bourne, in  the  interest  of  the  ports  of  Williamstown  and 
Sandridge.  Not  content  with  ruining  Geelong,  the  Melbourne 
men  have  set  themselves  to  ridicule  it.  One  of  their  stories 
goes  that  the  Geelong  streets  bear  such  a  fine  crop  of  grass 
that  a  free  selector  has  applied  to  have  them  surveyed  and 
sold  to  him,  under  the  42d  clause  of  the  New  Land  Act. 
Another  story  tells  how  a  Geelongee  lately  died  and  went 
to  heaven.  Peter,  opening  the  door  to  his  knock,  asked, 
"Where  from?"  "Geelong."  "Where?"  said  Peter.  "Gee- 
long." "  There's  no  such  place,"  replied  the  Apostle.  "In 
Victoria,"  cried  the  colonist.     "  Fetch  Ham's  Australian  At- 


S40  Greater  Britain. 

las,"  called  Peter ;  and  when  the  map  was  brought  and  the 
spot  shown  to  him,  he  replied,  "  Well,  I  beg  your  pardon,  but 
I  really  never  had  any  one  here  from  that  place  before." 

If  Geelong  be  standing  still,  which  in  a  colony  is  the  same 
as  rapid  decline  would  be  with  us,  the  famed  wheat  country 
around  it  seems  as  inexhaustible  as  it  ever  was.  The  whole 
of  the  Barrabool  range,  from  Ceres  to  Mount  Moriac,  is  one 
great  golden  waving  sheet,  save  where  it  is  broken  by  the 
stunted  claret-vineyards.  Here  and  there  I  came  upon  a 
group  of  the  little  daughters  of  the  German  vine-dressers 
tending  and  trenching  the  plants,  with  the  round  eyes,  rosy 
cheeks,  and  shiny  pigtails  of  their  native  Rudesheim  all 
flourishing  beneath  the  Southern  Cross. 

The  colonial  vines  are  excellent ;  better,  indeed,  than  the 
growths  of  California,  which,  however,  they  resemble  in  gen- 
eral character.  The  wines  are  naturally  all  Burgundies,  and 
colonial  imitations  of  claret,  port,  and  sherry  are  detestable, 
and  the  hocks  but  little  better.  The  Albury  Hermitage  is  a 
better  Avine  than  can  be  bought  in  Europe  at  its  price,  but 
in  some  places  this  wine  is  sold  as  Murray  Burgundy,  while 
the  dealers  foist  horrible  stuff  upon  you  under  the  name  of 
Hermitage.  Of  the  wines  of  New  South  "Wales,  White  Dall- 
Avood  is  a  fair  Sauterne,  and  White  Cawarra  a  good  Chablis, 
while  for  sweet  wines  the  Chasselas  is  cheap ;  and  the  Tokay, 
the  Shiraz,  and  the  still  Muscat  are  full  of  flavor. 

North-Avest  of  Geelong,  upon  the  summit  of  the  foot-hills 
of  the  dividing  range,  lies  Ballarat,  the  head-quarters  of  deep 
quartz-mining,  and  noAV  no  longer  a  diggers'  camp,  but  a 
graceful  city,  full  of  shady  boulevards  and  noble  buildings, 
and  Avith  a  stationary  population  of  thirty  thousand.  My 
first  \risit  Avas  made  in  the  company  of  the  prime  ministers 
of  all  the  colonies,  who  were  at  Melbourne  nominally  for  a 
conference,  but  really  to  enjoy  a  holiday  and  the  Intercolo- 
nial Exhibition.  With  that  extraordinary  generosity  in  the 
spending  of  other  people's  money  which  distinguishes  Co- 
lonial Cabinets,  the  Victorian  Government  placed  special 
trains,  horses,  carriages,  and  hotels  at  our  disposal,  the  result 
of  which  was  that,  feted  everywhere,  Ave  saw  nothing,  and  I 
had  to  return  to  Ballarat  in  order  even  to  go  through  the 
mines. 


Victoria  Ports.  341 

In  visiting  Lake  Learmouth  and  Clunes,  and  the  mining 
district  on  each  side  of  Ballarat,  I  found  myself  able  to  dis- 
cover the  date  of  settlement  by  the  names  of  places,  as  one 
finds  the  age  of  a  London  suburb  by  the  titles  of  its  terraces. 
The  dates  run  in  a  wave  across  the  country.  St.  Arnaud  is  a 
town  between  Ballarat  and  Castlemaine,  and  Alma  lies  near 
to  it,  while  Balaklava  Hill  is  near  Ballai-at,  where  also  are 
Raglan  and  Sebastopol.  Inkerman  lies  close  to  Castlemaine, 
and  Mount  Cathcart  bears  the  name  of  the  general  killed  at 
the  Two-gun  Battery,  while  the  Malakoff  diggings,  discov- 
ered doubtless  toward  the  end  of  the  war,  lie  to  the  north- 
ward, in  the  Wiminera. 

Everywhere  I  found  the  interior  far  hotter  than  the  coast, 
but  free  from  the  sudden  changes  of  temperature  that  occur 
in  Melbourne  twice  or  thrice  a  week  throughout  the  sum- 
mer, and  are  dangerous  to  children  and  to  persons  of  weak 
health.  After  two  or  three  days  of  the  hot  wind  there 
comes  a  night,  breathless,  heavy,  still.  In  the  morning  the 
sun  rises,  once  more  fierce  and  red.  After  such  a  night  and 
dawn  I  have  seen  the  shade  thermometer  in  the  cool  ve- 
randas of  the  Melbourne  Club  standing  at  95°  before  ten 
o'clock,  when  suddenly  the  sun  and  sky  would  change  from 
red  and  brown  to  gold  and  blue,  and  a  merry  breeze,  whis- 
tling up  from  the  ice-packs  of  the  South  Pole  and  across  the 
Antarctic  seas,  would  lower  the  temperature  in  an  hour  to 
60°  or  65°.  After  a  few  days  of  cold  and  rain  a  quiet  En- 
glish morning  would  be  cut  in  half  about  eleven  by  a  sud- 
den slamming  of  doors  and  whirling  of  dust  from  the  north 
across  the  town,  while  darkness  came  upon  the  streets. 
Then  was  heard  the  cry  of  "  Shut  the  windows ;  here's  a  hot 
wind,"  and  down  would  go  every  window,  barred  and  bolt- 
ed, while  the  oldest  colonists  walked  out  to  enjoy  the  dry 
air  and  healthy  heat.  The  thick  walls  of  the  clubs  and  pri- 
vate houses  will  keep  out  the  heat  for  about  three  days,  but 
if,  as  sometimes  happens,  the  hot  wind  lasts  longei',  then  the 
walls  are  heated  through,  and  the  nights  are  hardly  to  be 
borne.  Up  the  country  the  settlers  know  nothing  of  these 
changes.  The  irregularity  is  peculiar  to  the  Melbourne  sum- 
mei. 


o42  Greater  Britain. 


CHAPTER  X. 

TASMANIA. 


After  the  parching  heat  of  Australia  a  visit  to  Tasmania 
was  a  grateful  change.  Steaming  along  Port  Dalrymple 
and  up  the  Tamar  in  the  soft  sunlight  of  an  English  after- 
noon, we  were  able  to  look  upward,  and  enjoy  the  charming 
views  of  wood  and  river,  instead  of  having  to  stand  with 
downcast  head,  as  in  the  blaze  of  the  Victorian  sun. 

The  beauty  of  the  Tamar  is  of  a  quiet  kind :  its  scenery 
like  that  of  the  non-Alpine  districts  or  the  west  coast  of  New 
Zealand,  but  softer  and  more  smiling  than  is  that  of  even 
the  least  rude  portions  of  those  islands.  To  one  fresh  from 
the  baked  Australian  plains  there  is  likeness  between  any 
green  and  humid  land  and  the  last  unparched  countiy  that 
he  may  have  seen.  Still,  New  Zealand  can  not  show  fresher 
cheeks  nor  homes  more  cozy  than  those  of  the  Tamar  valley. 
Somersetshire  can  not  surpass  the  orchards  of  Tasmania,  nor 
Devon  match  its  flowers. 

The  natural  resemblance  of  Maria  Van  Diemen's  Land 
(as  Tasma  called  it  after  his  betrothed)  to  England  seems  to 
have  struck  the  early  settlers.  In  sailing  up  the  Tamar  we 
had  on  one  bank  the  county  of  Dorset,  with  its  villages 
touchingly  named  after  those  at  home,  according  to  their 
situations,  from  its  Lulworth  Cove,  Corfe  Castle,  and  St.  Al- 
ban's  Head,  round  to  Abbotsbury,  and,  on  our  right  hand, 
Devon,  with  its  Sidmouth,  Exeter,  and  Torquay. 

Hurrying  through  Launceston — a  pretty  little  town,  of 
which  the  banks  and  Post-office  are  models  of  simple  archi- 
tecture— I  passed  at  once  across  the  island  southward  to 
Hobarton,  the  capital.  The  scenery  on  the  great  convict 
road  is  not  impressive.  The  Tasmanian  Mountains — detach- 
ed and  rugged  masses  of  balsaltic  rock  from  four  to  five 
thousand  feet  in  height — are  wanting  in  grandeur  when  seen 
from  a  distance,  with  a  foreground  of  flat  corn-land.  It  is 
disheartening,  too,  in  an  English  colony,  to  see  half  the 
houses  shut  up  and  deserted,  and  acre  upon   acre  of  old 


Tasmania.  343 

wheat-land  abandoned  to  mimosa  scrub.  The  people  in 
these  older  portions  of  the  island  have  worked  their  lands  to 
death,  and  even  guano  seems  but  to  galvanize  them  into  a 
momentary  life.  Since  leaving  Virginia  I  had  seen  no  such 
melancholy  sight. 

Nature  is  bountiful  enough;  in  the  world  there  is  not  a 
fairer  climate ;  the  gum-trees  grow  to  350  feet,  attesting  the 
richness  of  the  soil ;  and  the  giant  tree-ferns  are  never  in- 
jured by  heat,  as  in  Australia,  nor  by  cold,  as  in  New  Zea- 
land. AH  the  fruits  of  Europe  are  in  season  at  the  same 
time,  and  the  Christmas  dessert  at  Hobarton  often  consists 
of  five-and-twenty  distinct  fresh  fruits.  Even  more  than 
Britain,  Tasmania  may  be  said  to  present  in  a  small  area  an 
epitome  of  the  globe;  mountain  and  plain,  forest  and  rolling 
prairie-land,  rivers  and  grand  capes,  and  the  noblest  harbor 
in  the  world,  all  are  contained  in  a  country  the  size  of  Ire- 
land. It  is  unhappily  not  only  in  this  sense  that  Tasmania 
is  the  Ireland  of  the  South. 

Beautiful  as  is  the  view  of  Hobarton  from  Mount  Wel- 
lington— the  spurs  in  the  foreground  clothed  with  a  crimson 
carpet  by  a  heath-like  plant ;  the  city  nestled  under  the  ba- 
saltic columns  of  the  crags — even  here  it  is  difficult  to  avoid 
a  certain  gloom  when  the  eye,  sweeping  over  the  vast  ex- 
panse of  Storm  Bay  and  D'Entrecasteaux  Sound,  discovers 
only  three  great  ships  in  a  harbor  fitted  to  contain  the  navies 
of  the  world. 

The  scene  first  of  the  horrible  deeds  of  early  convict  days 
at  Macquarie  Harbor  and  Port  Arthur,  and  later  of  the  still 
more  frightful  massacres  of  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  the 
isle,  Van  Diemen's  Land  has  never  been  a  name  of  happy 
omen,  and  now  the  island,  in  changing  its  title,  seems  not  to 
have  escaped  from  the  former  blight.  The  poetry  of  the  En- 
glish village  names  met  with  throughout  Tasmania  vanishes 
before  the  recollection  of  the  circumstances  under  which  the 
harsher  native  terms  came  to  be  supplanted.  Fifty  years 
ago  our  colonists  found  in  Tasmania  a  powerful  and  numer- 
ous though  degraded  native  race.  At  this  moment  three  old 
women  and  a  lad  who  dwell  on  Gun-carriage  Rock,  in  Bass's 
Straits,  are  all  who  remain  of  the  aboriginal  population  of 
the  island. 


344 


Greater  Britain. 


We  live  in  an  age  of  mild  humanity,  Ave  are  often  told ; 
but,  whatever  the  polish  of  manner  and  of  minds  in  the  Old 
Country,  in  outlying  portions  of  the  empire  there  is  no  lack 
of  the  old  savagery  of  our  race.  Battues  of  the  natives  were 
conducted  by  the  military  in  Tasmania  not  more  than  twen- 


..COVERNOR     DAVEYS 
PROCLAMATION 


> 


ty  years  ago,  and  are  not  unknown  even  now  among  the 
Queensland  settlers.  Let  it  not  be  thought  that  Englishmen 
go  out  to  murder  natives  unprovoked  ;  they  have  that  prov- 
ocation for  which  even  the  Spaniards  in  Mexico  used  to  wait, 
and  which  the  Brazilians  wait  for  now — the  provocation  of 


Tasmania.  345 

robberies  committed  in  the  neighborhood  by  natives  un- 
known. It  is  not  that  there  is  no  offense  to  punish,  it  is  that 
the  punishment  is  indiscriminate,  that  even  when  it  falls  upon 
the  guilty  it  visits  men  who  know  no  better.  Where  one 
wretched  untaught  native  pilfers  from  a  sheep-station  on  the 
Queensland  Downs,  a  dozen  will  be  shot  by  the  settlers  "  as 
an  example,"  and  the  remainder  of  the  tribe  brought  back  to 
the  district  to  be  fed  and  kept,  until  whisky,  rum,  and  other 
devils'  missionaries  have  done  their  work. 

Nothing  will  persuade  the  rougher  class  of  Queensland 
settlers  that  the  "black-fellow"  and  his  "jin"  are  human. 
They  tell  you  freely  that  they  look  upon  the  native  Austra- 
lian as  an  ingenious  kind  of  monkey,  and  that  it  is  not  for  us 
to  talk  too  much  of  the  treatment  of  the  "jins,"  or  native 
women,  while  the  "  wrens"  of  the  Curragh  exist  among  our- 
selves.  No  great  distance  appears  to  separate  us  from  the 
days  when  the  Spaniards  in  the  West  Indies  used  to  brand 
on  the  face  and  arms  all  the  natives  they  could  catch,  and 
gamble  them  away  for  wine. 

Though  not  more  than  three  or  four  million  acres  out  of 
seventeen  million  acres  of  land  in  Tasmania  have  as  yet  been 
alienated  by  the  Crown,  the  population  has  increased  only  by 
15,000  in  the  last  ten  years.  Such  is  the  indolence  of  the  set- 
tlers that  vast  tracts  of  land  in  the  central  plain,  once  fertile 
under  irrigation,  have  been  allowed  to  fall  back  into  a  desert 
state  from  sheer  neglect  of  the  dams  and  conduits.  Though 
iron  and  coal  are  abundant,  they  are  seldom  if  ever  worked, 
and  one  house  in  every  thirty-two  in  the  whole  island  is  li- 
censed for  the  sale  of  spirits,  of  which  the  annual  consump- 
tion exceeds  five  gallons  a  head  for  every  man,  woman,  and 
child  in  the  population.  Tasmania  reached  her  maximum  of 
revenue  in  1858,  and  her  maximum  of  trade  in  1853. 

The  curse  of  the  country  is  the  indolence  of  its  lotus-eat- 
ing population,  who,  like  all  dwellers  in  climates  cool  but 
winterless,  are  content  to  dream  away  their  lives  in  drowsi- 
ness to  which  the  habits  of  a  hotter  but  less  equable  clime — 
Queensland,  for  example  —  arc  energy  itself.  In  addition, 
however,  to  this  natural  cause  of  decline,  Van  Diemen's  Land 
is  not  yet  free  from  all  traces  of  the  convict  blood,  nor  from 
the  evil  effects  of  reliance  on  forced  labor.     It  is,  indeed,  but 

V  2 


346  Greater  Britain. 

a  few  years  since  the  island  was  one  great  jail,  and  in  1853 
there  were  still  20,000  actual  convicts  in  the  country.  The 
old  free  settlers  will  tell  you  that  the  deadly  shade  of  slave 
labor  has  not  blighted  Jamaica  more  thoroughly  than  that 
of  convict  labor  has  Van  Diemen's  Land. 

Seventy  miles  north-west  of  Hobarton  is  a  sheet  of  water 
called  Macquarie  Harbor,  the  deeds  wrought  upon  the  shores 
of  which  are  not  to  be  forgotten  in  a  decade.  In  1823  there 
were  228  prisoners  at  Macquarie  Hai'bor,  to  whom,  in  the 
year,  229  floggings  and  9925  lashes  were  ordered,  9100  lash- 
es being  actually  inflicted.  The  cat  was,  by  order  of  the  au- 
thorities, soaked  in  salt  water  and  dried  in  the  sun  before  be- 
ing used.  There  was  at  Macquarie  Harbor  one  convict  over- 
seer who  took  a  delight  in  seeing  his  companions  punished. 
A  day  seldom  passed  without  five  or  six  being  flogged  on  his 
reports.  The  convicts  were  at  his  mercy.  In  a  space  of  five 
years,  during  which  the  prisoners  at  Macquarie  Harbor  aver- 
aged 250  in  number,  there  were  835  floggings  and  32,723 
lashes  administered.  In  the  same  five  years  112  convicts 
absconded  from  this  settlement,  of  whom  ten  were  killed  and 
eaten  by  their  companions,  seventy-five  perished  in  the  bush 
with  or  without  cannibalism,  two  were  captured,  with  por- 
tions of  human  flesh  in  their  possession,  and  died  in  hospital, 
two  were  shot,  sixteen  were  hanged  for  murder  and  cannibal- 
ism, and  seven  are  reported  to  have  made  good  their  escape, 
though  this  is  by  no  means  certain. 

It  has  been  stated  by  a  Catholic  missionary  bishop  in  his 
evidence  before  a  Royal  Commission,  that  when,  after  a  mu- 
tiny at  one  of  the  stations,  he  read  out  to  his  men  the  names 
of  thirty-one  condemned  to  death,  they  with  one  accord  fell 
upon  their  knees  and  solemnly  thanked  God  that  they  were 
to  be  delivered  from  that  horrible  place.  Men  were  known 
to  commit  murder  that  they  might  be  sent  away  for  trial, 
preferring  death  to  Macquarie  Harbor. 

The  escapes  were  often  made  with  the  deliberate  expecta- 
tion of  death,  the  men  perfectly  knowing  that  they  would 
have  to  draw  lots  for  which  should  be  killed  and  eaten. 
Nothing  has  ever  been  sworn  to  in  the  history  of  the  world 
which,  for  revolting  atrocity,  can  compare  with  the  conduct 
of  the  Pierce-Greenhill  party  during  their  attempted  escape. 


Tasmania.  347 

The  testimony  of  Pierce  is  a  revelation  of  the  depths  of 
degradation  to  which  man  can  descend.  The  most  fearful 
thought,  when  we  hear  of  these  Tasmanian  horrors,  is  that 
probably  many  of  those  subjected  to  them  were  originally 
guiltless.  If  only  one  in  a  thousand  was  an  innocent  man, 
four  human  beings  were  consigned  each  year  to  hell  on  earth. 
We  think,  too,  that  the  age  of  transportation  for  mere  polit- 
ical offenses  has  long  gone  by,  yet  it  is  but  eleven  or  twelve 
years  since  Mr.  Frost  received  his  pardon,  after  serving  for 
sixteen  years  amid  the  horrors  of  Port  Arthur. 

Tasmania  has  never  been  able  to  rid  herself  of  the  convict 
population  in  any  great  degree,  for  the  free  colonics  have  al- 
ways kept  a  jealous  watch  upon  her  emigrants.  Even  at  the 
time  of  the  great  gold-rush  to  Victoria,  almost  every  '"Tas 
manian  bolter,"  and  many  a  suspected  but  innocent  man,  was 
seized  upon  his  landing  and  thrown  into  Pentridge  Jail,  to 
toil  within  its  twenty-foot  walls  till  death  should  come  to 
his  relief.  Even  now  men  of  wealth  and  station  in  Victoria 
are  sometimes  discovered  to  have  been  "  bolters  "  in  the  dig- 
ging times,  and  are  at  the  mercy  of  their  neighbors  and  the 
police  unless  the  governor  can  be  wheedled  into  granting 
pardons  for  their  former  deeds.  A  wealthy  Victorian  was 
arrested  as  a  "  Tasmanian  bolter"  while  I  was  in  the  colony. 

The  passport  system  is  still  in  force  in  the  free  colonies 
with  regard  to  passengers  arriving  from  penal  settlements, 
and  there  is  a  penalty  of  £100  inflicted  upon  captains  of  ships 
bringing  convicts  into  Melbourne.  The  conditional  pardons 
granted  to  prisoners  in  West  Australia  and  in  Tasmania  gen- 
erally contain  words  permitting  the  convict  to  visit  any  por- 
tion of  the  world  except  the  British  isles,  but  the  clause  is  a 
mere  dead  letter,  for  none  of  our  free  colonies  will  receive  even 
our  pardoned  convicts. 

It  is  hard  to  quarrel  with  'the  course  the  colonies  have 
taken  in  this  matter,  for  to  them  the  transportation  system  ap- 
pears in  the  light  of  moral  vitriol-throwing  ;  still,  there  is  a 
wide  distinction  to  be  drawn  between  the  action  of  the  New 
South  Welsh  jyid  that  of  the  New  Yorkers  when  they  de- 
clared to  a  British  Government  of  the  last  century  that  noth- 
ing should  induce  them  to  accept  the  labor  of  "  white  En- 
glish slaves :"  the  Sydney  people  have  enjoyed  the  advantages 


348  Greater  Britain. 

of  the  system  they  now  blame.  Even  the  Victorians  and 
South  Australians,  who  have  never  had  convicts  in  their  land, 
can  be  met  by  argument.  The  Australian  colonies,  it  might 
be  urged,  were  planted  for  the  sole  purpose  of  affording  a 
suitable  soil  for  the  reception  of  British  criminals :  in  face  of 
this  fact  the  remonstrances  of  the  free  colonists  read  some- 
what oddly,  for  it  would  seem  as  though  men  who  quitted, 
with  open  eyes,  Great  Britain  to  make  their  home  in  the  spots 
which  their  Government  had  chosen  as  its  giant  prisons,  have 
little  right  to  pretend  to  rouse  themselves  on  a  sudden,  and 
cry  out  that  England  is  pouring  the  scum  of  her  soil  on  to  a 
free  land,  and  that  they  must  rise  and  defend  themselves 
against  the  grievous  wrong.  Weighing,  however,  calmly,  the 
good  and  evil,  we  can  not  avoid  the  conclusion  that  the  Vic- 
torians have  much  reason  to  object  to  a  system  which  sends 
to  another  country  a  man  who  is  too  bad  for  his  own,  just  as 
Jersey  rogues  are  transported  to  Southampton.  The  Victo* 
rian  proposition  of  selecting  the  most  ruffianly  of  the  colonial 
expirees,  and  shipping  them  to  England  in  exchange  for  the 
convicts  that  we  might  send  to  Australia,  was  but  a  plagia- 
rism on  the  conduct  of  the  Virginians  in  a  similar  case,  who 
quietly  began  to  freight  a  ship  with  snakes. 

The  only  cure  for  Tasmania,  unless  one  is  to  be  found  in 
the  mere  lapse  of  years,  lies  in  annexation  to  Victoria;  a 
measure  strongly  wished  for  by  a  considerable  party  in  each 
of  the  colonies  concerned.  No  two  countries  in  the  world 
are  more  manifestly  destined  by  nature  to  be  complementary 
to  each  other. 

Owing  to  the  small  size  of  the  country,  and  the  great  mor- 
al influence  of  the  landed  gentry,  Tasmanian  politics  are  sin- 
gularly peaceful.  For  the  Lower  House  elections  the  suf- 
frage rests  upon  a  household,  not  a  manhood  basis,  as  in  Vic- 
toria and  New  South  Wales ;  and  for  the  Upper  House  it  is 
placed  at  £500  in  any  property,  or  £50  a  year  in  freehold  land. 
Tasmanian  society  is  cast  in  a  more  aristocratic  shape  than 
is  that  of  Queensland,  with  this  exception  the  most  oligarch- 
ical of  all  our  colonies ;  butcven  here,  as  in  the  other  colonies 
and  the  United  States,  the  ballot  is  supported  by  the  Con- 
servatives. Unlike  what  generally  happens  in  America,  the 
vote  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  is  here  kept  secret,  brib- 


Tasmania.  349 

ery  is  unknown,  and,  the  public  "  nomination  "  of  candidates 
having  been  abolished,  elections  pass  off  in  perfect  quiet.  In 
« the  course  of  a  dozen  conversations  in  Tasmania  I  met  with 
one  man  who  attacked  the  ballot.  He  was  the  first  person, 
aristocrat  or  democrat,  conservative  or  liberal,  male  or  female, 
silly  or  wise,  by  whom  I  had  found  the  ballot  opposed  since 
I  left  England. 

The  method  in  which  the  ballot  is  conducted  is  simple 
enough.  The  returning  officer  sits  in  an  outer  room,  beyond 
which  is  an  inner  chamber  with  only  one  door,  but  with  a 
desk.  The  voter  gives  his  name  to  the  returning  officer,  and 
receives  a  white  ticket  bearing  his  number  on  the  register. 
On  the  ticket  the  names  of  the  candidates  are  printed  alpha- 
betically, and  the  voter,  taking  the  paper  into  the  other  room, 
makes  a  cross  opposite  to  the  name  of  each  candidate  for 
whom  he  votes,  and  then  brings  the  paper  folded  to  the  re- 
turning officer,  who  puts  it  in  the  box.  In  New  South  Wales 
and  Victoria,  he  runs  his  pen  through  all  the  names  except- 
ing those  for  which  he  intends  to  vote,  and  himself  deposits 
the  ticket  in  the  box,  the  returning  officer  watching  him  to 
see  that  he  does  not  carry  out  his  ticket  to  show  it  to  his  brib- 
ers, and  then  send  it  in  again  by  a  man  on  his  own  side. 
One  scrutineer  for  each  candidate  watches  the  opening  of  the 
box.  In  New  South  Wales  the  voting-papers,  after  having 
been  sealed  up,  are  kept  for  five  years,  in  order  to  allow  of 
the  verification  of  the  number  of  votes  said  to  have  been  cast ; 
but  in  Tasmania  they  are  destroyed  immediately  after  the 
declaration  of  the  poll. 

Escaping  from  the  capital  and  its  Liliputian  politics,  I 
sailed  up  the  Derwent  to  New  Norfolk.  The  river  reminds 
the  traveller  sometimes  of  the  Meuse,  but  oftener  of  the 
Dart,  and  unites  the  beauties  of  both  streams.  The  scenery 
is  exquisitely  set  in  a  framework  of  hops ;  for  not  only  are 
all  the  flats  covered  with  luxuriant  bines,  but  the  hills  be- 
tween which  you  survey  the  views  have  also  each  its  "  gar- 
den," the  bines  being  trained  upon  a  wire  trellis. 

A  lovely  ride  was  that  from  New  Norfolk  to  the  Pan- 
shanger  salmon-ponds,  where  the  acclimatization  of  the  En- 
glish fish  has  lately  been  attempted.  The  track,  now  cut 
along  the  river  cliff,  now  lost  in  the  mimosa  scrub,  offers  a 


350  Greater  Britain. 

succession  of  prospects,  each  more  charming  than  the  one  he* 
fore  it ;  and  that  from  the  ponds  themselves  is  a  repetition 
of  the  view  along  the  vale  of  the  Towy,  from  Steele's  house  • 
near  Caermarthen.  Trout  of  a  foot  long,  and  salmon  of  an 
inch,  rewarded  us  (in  the  spirit)  for  our  ride,  hut  we  were 
called  on  to  express  our  helief  in  the  statement  that  salmon 
"  returned  from  the  sea"  have  lately  heen  seen  in  the  river. 

Father ,  the  Catholic  parish  priest,  "  that  saw  'em,"  is 

the  hero  of  the  day,  and  his  past  experiences  iipon  the  Shan- 
non are  quoted  as  testimonies  to  the  infallibility  in  fish  ques- 
tions. My  hosts  of  New  Norfolk  had  their  fears  lest  the 
reverend  gentleman  should  be  lynched  if  it  were  finally 
proved  that  he  had  been  mistaken. 

The  salmon  madness  will  at  least  have  two  results :  the 
catalogue  of  indigenous  birds  will  be  reduced  to  a  blank 
sheet,  for  every  wretched  Tasmanian  bird  that  never  saw  a 
salmon  egg  in  all  its  life  is  shot  clown  and  nailed  to  a  post 
for  fear  it  should  eat  the  ova ;  and  the  British  wasp  will  be 
acclimatized  in  the  southern  hemisphere.  One  is  known  to 
have  arrived  in  the  last  box  of  ova,  and  to  have  survived 
with  apparent  cheerfulness  his  100  days  in  ice.  Happy  fel- 
low, to  cross  the  line  in  so  cool  a  fashion  ! 

The  chief  drawbacks  to  Tasmanian  picnics  and  excursions 
are  the  snakes,  which  are  as  numerous  throughout  the  island 
as  they  are  round  Sydney.  One  of  the  convicts  in  a  letter 
home  once  wrote  :  "  Parrots  is  as  thick  as  crows,  and  snakes 
is  very  bad,  fourteen  to  sixteen  feet  long ;"  but  in  sober 
truth  the  snakes  are  chiefly  small. 

The  wonderful  "  snake  stories  "  that  in  the  colonial  papers 
take  the  place  of  the  English  "  triple  birth  "  and  "  gigantic 
gooseberry"  arc  all  written  in  vacation-time  by  the  students 
at  Melbourne  University,  but  a  true  one  that  I  heard  in 
Hobarton  is  too  good  to  be  lost.  The  chief-justice  of  the 
island,  who  in  his  leisure  time  is  an  amateur  naturalist,  and 
collects  specimens  for  European  collections  in  his  walks,  told 
me  that  it  was  his  practice,  after  killing  a  snake,  to  carry  it 
into  Hobarton  tied  to  a  stick  by  a  double  lashing.  A  few 
days  before  my  visit,  on  entering  his  hall,  where  an  hour  be- 
fore he  had  hung  his  stick  with  a  rare  snake  in  readiness  for 
the  Government  naturalist,  he  found  to  his  horror  that  the 


Confederation.  351 

viper  had  been  only  scotched,  and  that  he  had  made  use  of 
his  regained  life  to  free  himself  from  the  string  which  con- 
fined his  head  and  neck.  lie  was  still  tied  by  the  tail,  so  he 
was  swinging  to  and  fro,  or  "  squirming  around,"  as  some 
Americans  would  say,  with  open  mouth  and  protruded  tongue. 
When  lassoing  with  a  piece  of  twine  had  been  tried  in  vain, 
my  friend  fetched  a  gun,  and  succeeded  in  killing  the  snake 
and  much  damaging  the  stone-work  of  his  vestibule. 

After  a  week's  sojourn  in  the  neighborhood  of  Ilobarton 
I  again  crossed  the  island,  but  this  time  by  a  night  of  pierc- 
ing moonlight  such  as  can  be  witnessed  only  in  the  dry  air 
of  the  far  south.  High  in  the  heavens  and  opposite  the  moon 
was  the  solemn  constellation  of  the  Southern  Cross,  sharp- 
ly relieved  upon  the  pitchy  background  of  the  Magellanic 
clouds,  while  the  weird-tinted  stars  which  vary  the  night-sky 
of  the  southern  hemisphere  stood  out  from  the  blue  firmament 
elsewhere.     The  next  day  I  was  again  in  Melbourne. 


CHAPTER  XL 

CONFEDERATION. 

Melbourne  is  unusually  gay,  for  at  a  shapely  palace  in 
the  centre  of  the  city  the  second  great  Intercolonial  Exhibi- 
tion is  being  held,  and,  as  its  last  days  are  drawing  to  their 
close,  fifty  thousand  people — a  great  number  for  the  colonies 
— visit  the  building  every  week.  There  ai*e  exhibitors  from 
each  of  our  seven  southern  colonies,  and  from  French  New 
Caledonia,  Netherlandish  India,  and  the  Mauritius.  It  is 
strange  to  remember  now  that  in  the  colonization  both  of 
New  Zealand  and  of  Australia  we  were  the  successful  rivals 
of  the  French  only  after  having  been  behind  them  in  awaken- 
ing to  the  advisability  of  an  occupation  of  those  countries. 
In  the  case  of  New  Zealand  the  French  fleet  was  anticipated 
three  several  times  by  the  forethought  and  decision  of  our 
naval  officers  on  the  station,  and  in  the  case  of  Australia  the 
whole  south  coast  was  actually  named  "  La  Terre  Napoleon  " 
and  surveyed  for  colonization  by  Captain  Baudin  in  1800. 
New  Caledonia,  on  the  other  hand,  was  named  and  occupied 
by  ourselves,  and  afterward  abandoned  to  the  French. 


852  Greater  Britain. 

The  present  remarkable  exhibition  of  the  products  of  the 
Australias,  coining  just  at  the  time  when  the  border  customs 
between  Victoria  and  New  South  Wales  have  been  abolished 
by  agreement,  and  when  all  seems  to  point  to  the  formation 
of  a  customs  union  between  the  colonies,  leads  men  to  look 
still  farther  forward,  and  to  expect  confederation.  It  is 
worthy  of  notice  at  this  conjuncture  that  the  Australian  Pro- 
tectionists, as  a  rule,  refuse  to  be  protected  against  their  im- 
mediate neighbors,  juit  as  those  of  America  protect  the  man- 
ufactures of  the  Union  rather  than  of  single  States.  They 
tell  us  that  they  can  point,  with  regard  to  Europe,  to  pauper 
labor,  but  that  they  have  no  case  as  against  the  sister  colo- 
nies ;  they  wish,  they  say,  to  obtain  a  wide  market  for  the  sale 
of  the  produce  of  each  colony ;  the  nationality  they  would 
create  is  to  be  Australian,  not  provincial. 

Already  there  is  postal  union  and  a  partial  customs  union, 
and  confederation  itself,  however  distant  in  fact,  has  been 
very  lately  brought  about  in  the  spirit  by  the  efforts  of  the 
London  press,  one  well-known  papei  having  three  times  in  a 
single  article  called  the  Governor  of  New  South  Wales  by 
the  sounding  title  of  "  Governor-general  of  the  Australasian 
Colonies,"  to  which  he  has,  of  course,  not  the  faintest  claim. 

There  are  many  difficulties  in  the  way  of  confederation. 
The  leading  merchants  and  squatters  of  V ictoria  are  in  fa- 
vor of  it ;  but  not  so  those  of  the  poorer  or  less  populous 
colonies,  where  there  is  much  fear  of  being  swamped.  The 
costliness  of  the  Federal  Government  of  New  Zealand  is  a 
warning  against  over-hasty  confederation.  Victoria,  too, 
would  probably  insist  upon  the  exclusion  of  West  Australia, 
on  account  of  her  convict  population.  The  continental  theo- 
ry is  undreamt  of  by  Australians,  owing  to  their  having  al- 
ways been  inhabitants  of  comparatively  small  States,  and 
not,  like  dwellers  in  the  organized  Territories  of  America,  po- 
tentially citizens  of  a  vast  and  homogeneous  empire. 

The  choice  of  capital  will,  here  as  in  Canada,  be  a  matter 
of  peculiar  difficulty.  It  is  to  be  hoped  by  all  lovers  of  free- 
dom that  some  hitherto  unknown  village  will  be  selected. 
There  is  in  all  great  cities  a  strong  tendency  to  Imperialism. 
Bad  pavement,  much  noise,  narrow  lanes,  blockaded  streets, 
all  these  things  are  ill  dealt  with  by  free  government,  we  are 


Confederation.  353 

told.  Englishmen  who  have  been  in  Paris,  Americans  who 
know  St.  Petersburg,  forgetting  that  without  the  Emperor 
the  Prefet  is  impossible,  cry  out  that  London,  that  New 
York,  In  their  turn,  need  a  Haussmann.  In  this  tendency 
lies  a  terrible  danger  to  Free  States  —a  danger  avoided,  how- 
ever, or  greatly  lessened,  by  the  seat  of  the  Legislature  be- 
ing placed,  as  in  Canada  and  the  United  States,  far  away 
from  the  great  cities.  Were  Melbourne  to  become  the  seat 
of  government,  nothing  could  prevent  the  distant  colonies 
from  increasing  the  already  gigantic  power  of  that  city  by 
choosing  her  merchants  as  their  representatives. 

The  bearing  of  confederation  upon  impei'ial  interests  is  a 
more  simple  matter.  Although  xmion  will  tend  to  the  earli- 
er independence  of  the  colonies,  yet,  if  federated,  they  are 
more  likely  to  be  a  valuable  ally  than  they  could  be  if  re- 
maining so  many  separate  countries.  They  would  also  be  a 
stronger  enemy ;  but  distance  will  make  all  their  wars  naval, 
and  a  strong  fleet  would  be  more  valuable  to  us  as  a  friend 
than  dangerous  as  an  enemy,  unless  in  the  case  of  a  coalition 
against  us,  in  which  it  would  probably  not  be  the  interest  of 
Australia  to  join. 

From  the  colonial  point  of  view,  federation  would  tend  to 
secure  to  the  Australians  better  general  and  local  govern- 
ment than  they  possess  at  present.  It  is  absurd  to  expect 
that  colonial  governors  should  be  upon  good  terms  with 
their  charges  when  we  shift  men  every  four  years — say  from 
Demerara  to  New  South  Wales,  or  from  Jamaica  to  Victo- 
ria. The  unhappy  governor  loses  half  a  year  in  moving  to 
his  post,  and  a  couple  of  years  in  coming  to  understand  the 
circumstances  of  his  new  province,  and  then  settles  down  to 
be  successful  in  the  ruling  of  educated  whites  under  demo- 
cratic institutions  only  if  he  can  entirely  throw  aside  the 
whole  of  his  experience,  derived  as  it  will  probably  have 
been  from  the  despotic  sway  over  blacks.  We  never  can 
have  a  set  of  colonial  governors  fit  for  Australia  until  the 
Australian  governments  are  made  a  distinct  service,  and  en- 
tirely separated  from  those  of  the  West  Indies,  of  Africa, 
and  Hong  Kong. 

Besides  improving  the  Government,  confederation  would 
lend  to  every  colonist  the  dignity  derived  from  citizenship 


354  Greater  Britain. 

of  a  great  country — a  point  the  importance  of  which  will  not 
be  contested  by  any  one  who  has  been  in  America  since  the 
war. 

It  is  not  easy  to  resist  the  conclusion  that  confederation 
is  in  every  way  desirable.  If  it  leads  to  independence  we 
must  say  to  the  Australians  what  Houmai  ta  Whiti  said  in 
his  great  speech  to  the  progenitors  of  the  Maori  race  when 
they  were  quitting  Hawaiki :  "  Depart,  and  dwell  in  peace ; 
let  there  be  no  quarrelling  among  you,  but  build  up  a  great 
people." 


CHAPTER  XII. 

ADELAIDE. 

The  capital  of  South  Australia  is  reputed  the  hottest  of 
all  the  cities  that  are  chiefly  inhabited  by  the  English  race, 
and  as  I  neared  it  through  the  Backstairs  Passage  into  the 
Gulf  of  St.  Vincent,  past  Kangaroo  Island,  and  still  more  when 
I  landed  at  Glenelg,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  its  reputa- 
tion was  deserved.  The  extreme  heat  which  characterizes 
South  Australia  is  to  some  extent  a  consequence  of  its  lying 
as  far  north  as  New  South  Wales  and  Queensland,  and  so  far 
inland  as  to  escape  the  breeze  by  which  their  coasts  arc  vis^ 
ited;  for  although  by  "South  Australia"  we  should,  in  the 
southern  hemisphere,  naturally  understand  that  portion  of 
Australia  which  was  farthest  from  the  tropics,  yet  it  is  a 
curious  fact  that  the  whole  colony  of  Victoria  is  to  the  south 
of  Adelaide,  and  that  nearly  all  the  northernmost  points  of 
the  continent  now  lie  within  the  country  misnamed  "  South 
Australia." 

The  immense  northern  territory,  being  supposed  to  be 
valueless,  has  generously  been  handed  over  to  South  Austra*- 
lia,  which  thus  becomes  the  widest  of  all  British  colonies, 
and  nearly  as  large  as  English  Hindostan.  If  the  present 
great  expenditure  succeeds  in  causing  the  discovery  of  any 
good  land  at  the  north,  it  will  of  course  at  once  be  made  a 
separate  colony.  The  only  important  result  that  seems  like- 
ly to  follow  from  this  annexation  of  the  northern  territory 
to  South  Australia  is  that  the  school-boys'  geography  will 


Adelaide.  855 

suffer ;  one  would  expect,  indeed,  that  a  total  destruction  of 
all  principle  in  the  next  generation  will  be  the  inevitable  re- 
sult of  so  rude  a  blow  to  confidence  in  books  and  masters  as 
the  assurance  from  a  teacher's  lips  that  the  two  most  remote 
countries  of  Australia  are  united  under  one  Colonial  Govern- 
ment, and  that  the  northernmost  points  of  the  whole  conti- 
nent are  situated  in  South  Australia.  Boys  will  pi'obably 
conclude  that,  across  the  line,  south  becomes  north  and  north 
south,  and  that  in  Australia  the  sun  rises  in  the  west. 

Instead  of  gold,  wheat,  sheep,  as  in  Victoria,  the  staples 
here  are  wheat,  sheep,  copper  ;  and  my  introduction  to  South 
Australia  was  characteristic  of  the  colony,  for  I  found  in 
Port  Adelaide,  where  I  first  set  foot,  not  only  every  store 
filled  to  overflowing,  but  piles  of  wheat-sacks  in  the  road- 
ways, and  the  lines  of  wheat-cars  on  the  sidings  of  railways, 
without  even  a  tarpaulin  to  cover  the  grain. 

Of  all  the  mysteries  of  commerce,  those  that  concern  the 
wheat  and  flour  trade  are,  perhaps,  the  strangest  to  the  un- 
initiated. Breadstuff's  are  still  sent  from  California  and  Chili 
to  Victoria,  yet  from  Adelaide,  close  at  hand,  wheat  is  being 
sent  to  England  and  flour  to  New  York  ! 

There  can  be  no  doubt  but  that  ultimately  Victoria  and 
Tasmania  will  at  least  succeed  in  feeding  themselves.  It  is 
probable  that  neither  New  Zealand  nor  Queensland  will  find 
it  to  their  interest  to  do  the  like.  Wool-growing  in  the 
former  and  cotton  and  wool  in  the  latter  will  continue  to  pay 
better  than  wheat  in  the  greater  portion  of  their  lands. 
Tbeir  granary,  and  that  possibly  of  the  city  of  Sidney  itself, 
will  be  found  in  South  Australia,  especially  if  land  capable  of 
carrying  wheat  be  discovered  to  the  westward  of  the  settle- 
ments about  Adelaide.  That  the  Australias,  Chili,  Califor- 
nia, Oregon,  and  other  Pacific  States  can  ever  export  largely 
of  wheat  to  Europe  is  more  than  doubtful.  If  manufactures 
spring  up  on  this  side  the  world,  these  countries,  whatever 
their  fertility,  will  have  at  least  enough  to  do  to  feed  them- 
selves. 

As  I  entered  the  streets  of  the  "  farinaceous  village,"  as 
Adelaide  is  called  by  conceited  Victorians,  I  was  struck  with 
the  amount  of  character  they  exhibit  both  in  the  way  of  build- 
ings, of  faces,  and  of  dress.     The  South  Australians  have  far 


3oG  Greater  Britain. 

more  idea  of  adapting  their  houses  and  clothes  to  their  cli- 
mate than  have  the  people  of  the  other  colonies,  and  their 
faces  adapt  themselves.  The  verandas  to  the  shops  are  suffi- 
ciently close  to  form  a  perfect  piazza ;  the  people  rise  early, 
and  water  the  side-walk  in  front  of  their  houses ;  and  you 
never  meet  a  man  who  does  not  make  some  sacrifice  to  the 
heat  in  the  shape  of  puggree,  silk  coat,  or  sun-helmet ;  but 
the  women  are  nearly  as  unwise  here  as  in  the  other  colonies, 
and  persist  in  going  about  in  shawls  and  colored  dresses. 
Might  they  but  see  a  few  of  the  Richmond  or  Baltimore  la- 
dies in  their  pure  white  muslin  frocks,  and  die  of  envy,  for 
the  dress  most  suited  to  a  hot  dry  climate  is  also  the  most 
beautiful  under  its  bright  sun. 

The  German  element  is  strong  in  South  Australia,  and 
there  are  whole  villages  in  the  wheat-country  where  English 
is  never  spoken ;  but  here,  as  in  America,  there  has  been  no 
mingling  of  the  races,  and  the  whole  divergence  from  the 
British  types  is  traceable  to  climatic  influences,  and  especial- 
ly dry  heat.  The  men  born  here  are  thin,  and  fine-featured, 
somewhat  like  the  Pitcairn  Islanders,  while  the  women  are 
all  alike — small,  pretty,  and  bright,  but  with  a  burnt-up  look. 
The  haggard  eye  might,  perhaps,  be  ascribed  to  the  dreaded 
presence  of  my  old  friend  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  brulot 
sand-fly.  The  inhabitants  of  all  hot,  dry  countries  speak 
from  the  head,  and  not  the  chest,  and  the  English  in  Austra- 
lia are  acquiring  this  habit ;  you  seldom  find  a  "  corn-stalk  " 
who  speaks  well  from  the  chest. 

The  air  is  crisp  and  hot — crisper  and  hotter  even  than  that 
of  Melbourne.  The  shaded  thermometer  upon  the  Victorian 
coast  seldom  reaches  110°,  but  in  the  town  of  Adelaide  117° 
has  been  recorded  by  the  Government  astronomer.  Such  is 
the  figure  of  the  Australian  continent  that  Adelaide,  although 
a  sea-port  town,  lies,  as  it  were,  inland.  Catching  the  heated 
gales  from  three  of  the  cardinal  points,  Adelaide  has  a  sum- 
mer six  months  long,  and  is  exposed  to  a  fearful  continuance 
of  hot  winds;  nevertheless  105°  at  Adelaide  is  easier  borne 
than  95°  in  the  shade  at  Sydney. 

Nothing  can  be  prettier  than  the  outskirts  of  the  capital. 
In  laying  out  Adelaide  its  founders  have  reserved  a  park 
about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  in  width  all  round  the  city.     Tins 


Adelaide.  357 

gives  a  charming  drive  nine  miles  long,  outside  which  again 
are  the  olive-yards  and  villas  of  the  citizens.  Hedges  of  the 
yellow  cactus,  or  of  the  graceful  Kangaroo  Island  acacia, 
bound  the  gardens,  and  the  pomegranate,  magnolia,  fig,  and 
aloe  grow  upon  every  lawn.  Five  miles  to  the  eastward  are 
the  cool  wooded  hills  of  the  Mount  Lofty  range,  on  the  tops 
of  which  are  grown  the  English  fruits  for  which  the  plains 
afford  no  shade  or  moisture. 

Crossing  the  Adelaide  plains,  for  fifty  miles  by  railway, 
to  Kapunda,  I  beheld  one  great  wheat-field  without  a  break. 
The  country  was  finer  than  any  stretch  of  equal  extent  in 
California  or  Victoria,  and  looked  as  though  the  crops  were 
"  standing  " — which  in  one  sense  they  were,  though  the  grain 
was  long  since  "  in."  The  fact  is,  that  they  use  the  Ridley 
machines,  by  which  the  ears  are  thrashed  out  without  any 
cutting  of  the  straw,  which  continues  to  stand,  and  is  finally 
plowed  in  at  the  farmer's  leisure,  except  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Adelaide.  There  would  be  a  golden  age  of  partridge- 
shooting  in  Old  England  did  the  climate  and  the  price  of 
straw  allow  of  the  adoption  of  the  Ridley  reaper.  Under 
this  system  South  Australia  grows  on  the  average  six  times 
as  much  wheat  as  she  can  use,  whereas,  if  reaping  had  to  be 
paid  for,  she  could  only  grow  from  one  and  a  half  times  to 
twice  as  much  as  would  meet  the  home  demand. 

In  this  country,  as  in  America,  "  bad  farming  "  is  found 
to  pay;  for  with  cheap  land,  the  Ridley  reaper  and  good 
markets,  light  crops  without  labor,  except  the  peasant-pro- 
prietor's own  toil,  pay  well  when  heavy  crops  obtained  by 
the  use  of  hired  labor  would  not  reimburse  the  capitalist. 
The  amount  of  land  under  cultivation  has  been  trebled  in  the 
last  seven  years,  and  half  a  million  acres  are  now  under 
wheat.  South  Australia  has  this  year  produced  seven  times 
as  much  grain  as  she  can  consume,  and  twelve  acres  are  un- 
der wheat  for  every  adult  male  of  the  population  of  the 
colony. 

A  committee  has  been  lately  sitting  in  New  South  Wales 
"  to  consider  the  state  of  the  colony."  To  judge  from  the 
evidence  taken  before  it,  the  members  seemed  to  have  con- 
ceived that  their  task  was  to  inquire  why  South  Australia 
prospered  above  New  South  Wales.     Frugality  of  the  peo- 


358  Greater  Britain. 

pie,  especially  of  the  Germans,  and  fertility  of  the  soil  were 
1  he  reasons  which  they  gave  for  the  result  ;  but  it  is  impossi- 
ble not  to  see  that  the  success  of  South  Australia  is  but  an- 
other instance  of  the  triumph  of  small  proprietors,  of  whom 
there  are  now  some  seven  or  eight  thousand  in  the  colony, 
and  who  were  brought  here  by  the  adoption  of  the  Wake- 
field  land  system. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  colony  land  was  sold  at  a  good 
price  in  130-acre  sections,  with  one  acre  of  town-land  to  each 
agricultural  section.  Nt>w,  under  rules  made  at  home,  but 
confirmed  after  the  introduction  of  self-government,  land  is 
sold  by  auction,  with  a  reserved  price  of  £1  an  acre,  but 
when  once  a  block  has  passed  the  hammer  it  can  forever  be 
taken  up  at  £1  the  acre  without  further  competition.  The 
Land  Fund  is  kept  separate  from  the  other  revenue,  and  a 
few  permanent  charges,  such  as  that  for  the  aborigines,  be- 
ing j>aid  out  of  it,  the  remainder  is  divided  into  three  por- 
tions, of  which  two  are  destined  for  public  works  and  one 
for  immigration. 

There  is  a  marvellous  contrast  to  be  drawn  between  the 
success  which  has  attended  the  Wakefield,  system  in  South 
Australia  and  the  total  failure,  in  the  neighboring  colony  of 
West  Australia,  of  the  old  system,  under  which,  vast  tracts 
of  land  being  alienated  for  small  prices  to  the  Crown,  there 
remains  no  fund  for  introducing  that  abundant  supply  of 
labor  without  which  the  land  is  useless. 

Adelaide  is  so  distant  from  Europe  that  no  immigrants 
come  of  themselves,  and,  in  the  assisted  importation  of  both 
men  and  women,  the  relative  proportions  of  English,  Scotch, 
and  Irish  that  exist  at  home  are  carefully  preserved,  by 
which  simple  precaution  the  colony  is  saved  from  an  organic 
change  of  type,  such  as  that  which  threatens  all  America, 
although  it  would,  of  course,  be  idle  to  deny  that  the  restric- 
tion is  aimed  against  the  Irish. 

The  greatest  difficulty  of  young  countries  lies  in  the  want 
of  women;  not  only  is  this  a  bar  to  the  natural  increase  of 
population,  it  is  a  deficiency  preventive  of  permanency,  de- 
structive of  religion ;  where  woman  is  not,  there  can  be  no 
home,  no  country. 

How  to  obtain  a  supply  of  marriageable  girls  is  a  question 


A  D  EL  AIDE .  850 

which  Canada,  Tasmania,  South  Australia,  and  New  South 
Wales  have  each  in  their  turn  attempted  to  solve  by  the  ar- 
tificial introduction  of  Irish  work-house  girls.  The  difficulty 
apparently  got  rid  of,  we  begin  to  find  that  it  is  not  so  much 
as  fairly  seen  ;  we  have  yet  to  look  it  "  squarely "  in  the 
face.  The  point  of  the  matter  is  that  we  should  find  not 
girls,  but  honest  girls — not  women  merely,  but  women  fit  to 
bear  families  in  a  free  State. 

One  of  the  colonial  superintendents,  writing  of  a  lately-re- 
ceived batch  of  Irish  work-house  girls,  has  said  that,  if  these 
are  the  "  well-conducted  girls,  he  should  be  curious  to  see  a 
lew  of  the  evil-disposed."  While  in  South  Australia,  I  read 
the  details  of  the  landing  of  a  similar  party  of  women,  from 
Limerick  work-house,  one  Sunday  afternoon  at  Point  Levi, 
the  Lambeth  of  Quebec.  Although  supplied  by  the  city  au- 
thorities with  meat  and  drink,  and  ordered  to  leave  for  Mon- 
treal at  early  morning,  nothing  could  be  more  abominable 
than  their  conduct  in  the  mean  while.  They  sold  baggage, 
bonnets,  combs,  cloaks,  and  scarfs,  keeping  on  nothing  but 
their  crinolines  and  senseless  finery.  With  the  pence  they 
thus  collected  they  bought  corn-whisky,  and  in  a  few  hours 
were  yelling,  fighting,  swearing,  wallowing  in  beastly  drunk- 
enness ;  and  by  the  time  the  authorities  came  down  to  pack 
them  off  by  train  they  were  as  fiends,  mad.  with  rum  and 
whisky.  At  five  in  the  morning  they  reached  the  Catholic 
Home  at  Montreal,  where  the  pious  nuns  were  shocked  and 
horrified  at  their  grossness  of  conduct  and  lewd  speech ; 
nothing  should  force  them,  they  declared,  ever  again  to  take 
into  their  peaceable  asylum  the  Irish  work-house  girls.  This 
was  no  exceptional  case:  the  reports  from  South  Australia, 
from  Tasmania,  can  show  as  bad ;  and  in  Canada  such  con- 
duct on  the  part  of  the  freshly-landed  girls  is  common.  A 
Tasmania  magistrate  has  stated  in  evidence  before  a  Parlia- 
mentary Committee  that  once  when  his  wife  was  in  ill  health 
he  w^ent  to  one  of  the  immigration  offices  and  applied  for  a 
decent  woman  to  attend  on  a  sick  lady.  The  woman  was 
sent  down,  and  found  next  day  in  her  room  lying  on  the  bed 
in  a  state  best  pictured  in  her  own  words :  "  Here  I  am  with 
my  yard  of  clay,  blowing  a  cloud,  you  say.'''' 

It  is  evident  that  a  batch  of  thoroughly  bad  girls  cost  a 


oGO  Greater  Britain. 

colony  from  first  to  last,  in  the  way  of  prisons,  hospitals,  and 
public  morals,  ten  times  as  much  as  would  the  free  passages 
across  the  seas  of  an  equal  number  of  worthy  Irish  women, 
free  from  the  work-house  taint.  Of  one  of  these  gangs  which 
landed  in  Quebec  not  many  years  ago  it  has  been  asserted 
by  the  immigration  superintendents  that  the  traces  are  visi- 
ble to  this  day,  for  wherever  the  women  went,  "sin,  and 
shame,  and  death  were  in  their  track."  The  Irish  unions 
have  no  desire  in  the  matter  beyond  that  of  getting  rid  of 
their  most  abandoned  girls ;  their  interests  and  those  of  the 
colonies  they  supply  are  diametrically  opposed.  No  inspec- 
tion, no  agreements,  no  supervision  can  be  effective  in  the 
face  of  facts  like  these.  The  class  that  the  unions  can  afford 
to  send,  Canada  and  Tasmania  can  not  afford  to  keep.  Wom- 
en are  sent  out  with  babies  in  their  arms;  no  one  will  take 
them  into  service,  because  the  children  are  in  the  way,  and 
in  a  few  weeks  they  fall  chargeable  on  one  of  the  colonial 
benevolent  (societies,  to  be  kept  till  the  children  grow  up  or 
the  mothers  die.  Even  when  the  girls  are  not  so  wholly 
vicious  as  to  be  useless  in  service  they  are  utterly  ignorant 
of  every  thing  they  ought  to  know.  Of  neither  domestic 
nor  farm-Avork  have  they  a  grain  of  knowledge.  Of  thirteen 
who  were  lately  sent  to  an  up-country  town  but  one  knew 
how  to  cook,  or  wash,  or  milk,  or  iron,  while  three  of  them 
had  agreed  to  refuse  employment  unless  they  were  engaged 
to  serve  together.  The  agents  are  at  their  wits'  ends  ;  either 
the  girls  are  so  notoriously  infamous  in  their  ways  of  life 
that  no  one  will  hire  them,  or  else  they  are  so  extravagant 
in  their  new-found  "  independence  "  that  they  on  their  side 
will  not  be  hired.  Meanwhile  the  Irish  authorities  lay  every 
evil  upon  the  long  sea-voyage.  They  say  that  they  select 
the  best  of  girls,  but  that  a  few  days  at  sea  suffice  to  de- 
moralize them. 

The  colonics  could  not  do  better  than  combine  for  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  new  and  more  efficient  emigration  agency 
in  Ireland.  To  avoid  the  evil,  by  as  far  as  possible  refusing 
to  meet  it  face  to  face,  South  Australia  has  put  restrictions 
on  her  Irish  immigration ;  for  there  as  in  America  it  is  found 
that  the  Scotch  and  Germans  are  the  best  of  immigrants. 
The  Scotch  are  not  more  successful  in  Adelaide  than  every- 


Adelaide.  361 

Where  in  the  known  world.  Half  the  most  prominent  among 
the  statesmen  of  the  Canadian  Confederation,  of  Victoria, 
and  of  Queensland  are  born  Scots,  and  all  the  great  mer- 
chants of  India  are  of  the  same  nation.  Whether  it  he  that 
the  Scotch  emigrants  are  for  the  most  part  men  of  better 
education  than  those  of  other  nations,  of  whose  citizens  only 
the  poorest  and  most  ignorant  are  known  to  emigrate,  or 
whether  the  Scotchman  owes  his  uniform  success  in  every 
climate  to  his  perseverance  or  his  shrewdness,  the  fact  re- 
mains, that  wherever  abroad  you  come  across  a  Scotchman 
you  invariably  find  him  prosperous  and  respected. 

The  Scotch  emigrant  is  a  man  who  leaves  Scotland  be- 
cause he  wishes  to  rise  faster  and  higher  than  he  can  at 
home,  whereas  the  emigrant  Irishman  quits  Gal  way  or  Coun- 
ty Cork  only  because  there  is  no  longer  food  or  shelter  for 
him  there.  The  Scotchman  crosses  the  seas  in  calculating 
contentment ;  the  Irishman  in  sorrow  and  despair. 

At  the  Burra  Burra  and  Kapunda  copper  mines  there  is 
not  much  to  see,  so  my  last  days  in  South  Australia  were 
given  to  the  political  life  of  the  colony,  which  present  one 
singular  feature.  For  the  elections  to  the  Council  or  Upper 
House,  for  which  the  franchise  is  a  freehold  worth  £50,  or  a 
leasehold  of  £20  a  year,  the  whole  country  forms  but  a  single 
district,  and  the  majority  elect  their  men.  In  a  country 
where  party  feeling  runs  high,  such  a  system  would  evident- 
ly unite  almost  all  the  evils  conceivable  in  a  plan  of  repre- 
sentation, but  in  a  peaceful  colony  it  undoubtedly  works 
well.  Having  absolute  power  in  their  hands,  the  majority 
here,  as  in  the  selection  of  a  governor  for  an  American  State, 
use  their  position  with  great  prudence,  and  make  choice  of 
the  best  men  that  the  country  can  produce.  The  franchise 
for  the  Lower  House,  for  the  elections  to  which  the  colony 
is  "  districted,"  is  the  simple  one  of  six  months'  residence, 
which  with  the  ballot  works  irreproachably. 

The  day  that  I  left  Adelaide  was  also  that  upon  which 
Captain  Cadell,  the  opener  of  the  Murray  to  trade,  sailed 
with  his  naval  expedition  to  fix  upon  a  capital  for  the  North- 
ern territory,  that  coast  of  tropical  Australia  which  faces  the 
Moluccas.  As  Governor  Gilpin  had  pressed  me  to  stay,  he 
pressed  me  to  go  with  him,  making  as   an  inducement    a 

Q 


362  Greater  Britain. 

promise  to  name  .after  me  either  "  a  city  "  or  a  headland. 
He  said  he  should  advise  me  to  select  the  headland,  because 
that  would  remain,  -whereas  the  city  probably  would  not. 
When  I  pleaded  that  he  had  no  authority  to  carry  passen- 
gers, he  offered  to  take  me  as  his  surgeon.  Hitherto  the  ex* 
peditions  have  discovered  nothing  but  natives,  mangroves, 
alligators,  and  sea-slugs  ;  and  the  whole  of  the  money  re- 
ceived from  capitalists  at  home,  for  300,000  acres  of  land  to 
be  surveyed  and  handed  over  to  them  in  North  Australia, 
being  now  exhausted,  the  Government  arc  seriously  thinking 
of  reimbursing  the  investors  and  giving  up  the  search  for 
land.  It  would  be  as  cheap  to  colonize  equatorial  Africa 
from  Adelaide,  as  tropical  Australia.  If  the  Northern  terri- 
tory is  ever  to  be  rendered  habitable,  it  must  be  by  Queens- 
land that  the  work  is  done. 

It  is  not  certain  that  North  Australia  may  not  be -found 
to  yield  gold  in  plenty.  In  a  little-known  manuscript  of  the 
seventeenth  century  the  north-west  of  Australia  is  called 
"  The  Land  of  Gold ;"  and  we  are  told  that  the  fishermen  of 
Solor,  driven  on  to  this  land  of  gold  by  stress  of  weather, 
picked  up  in  a  few  hours  their  boat  full  of  gold  nuggets,  and 
returned  in  safety.  They  never  dared  repeat  their  voyage, 
on  account  of  their  dread  of  the  unknown  seas ;  but  Manoel 
Godinho  de  Eredia  was  commissioned  by  the  Portuguese 
Lord  Admiral  of  India  to  explore  this  gold  land,  and  enrich 
the  Crown  of  Portugal  by  the  capture  of  the  treasures  it 
contained.  It  would  be  strange  enough  if  gold  came  to  be 
discovered  on  the  north-west  coast  in  the  spot  from  which 
the  Portuguese  reported  their  discovery. 

By  dawn,  after  one  of  the  most  stiffing  of  Australian 
nights,  I  left  Port  Adelaide  for  King  George's  Sound.  A 
long  narrow  belt  of  a  clear  red-yellow  light  lay  glowing 
along  the  horizon  to  the  east,  portending  heat  and  drought ; 
elsewhere  the  skies  were  of  a  deep  blue-black,  As  Ave  steam- 
ed past  Kangaroo  Island,  and  through  Investigator  Straits, 
the  sun  shot  up  from  the  tawny  plains,  and  the  hot  wind  from 
the  northern  desert,  rising  on  a  sudden  after  the  stillness  of 
the  night,  whirled  clouds  of  sand  over  the  surface  of  the  bay. 


Transportation.  363 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

TRANSPORTATION. 

After  five  clays'  steady  steaming  across  the  great  Aus- 
tralian bight,  north  of  which  lies  the  true  "  Terra  Australis 
incognita,"  I  reached  King  George's  Sound — "  Le  Port  du 
Roi  Georges  en  Australie,"  as  I  saw  it  written  on  a  letter  in 
the  jail.  At  the  shore-end  of  a  great  land-locked  harbor  the 
little  houses  of  bright  white  stone  that  make  up  the  town 
of  Albany  peep  out  from  among  geranium-covered  rocks. 
The  climate,  unlike  that  of  the  greater  portion  of  Australia, 
is  dafmp  and  tropical,  and  the  dense  scrub  is  a  mass  of  flower- 
ing bushes,  with  bright  blue  and  scarlet  blooms  and  curious- 
ly-cut leaves. 

The  contrast  between  the  scenery  and  the  people  of  West 
Australia  is  great  indeed.  The  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  Al- 
bany were  represented  by  a  tribe  of  filthy  natives — tall,  half- 
starved,  their  heads  bedaubed  with  red  ochre,  and  their  faces 
smeared  with  yellow  clay;  the  "colonists"  b}r  a  gang  of 
fiend-faced  convicts  working  in  chains  upon  the  esplanade, 
and  a  group  of  scowling  expirees  hunting  a  monkey  with 
bulldogs  on  the  pier;  while  the  native  women,  half  clothed 
in  tattered  kangaroo-skins,  came  slouching  past  with  an  as- 
pect of  defiant  wretchedness.  Work  is  never  done  in  West 
Australia  unless  under  the  compulsion  of  the  lash,  for  a  sim- 
ilar degradation  of  labor  is  produced  by  the  use  of  convicts 
as  by  that  of  slaves. 

Settled  at  an  earlier  date  than  was  South  Australia ; 
West  Australia,  then  called  Swan  River,  although  one  of  the 
oldest  of  the  colonies,  was  so  soon  ruined  by  the  free  gift 
to  the  first  settlers  of  vast  territories  useless  without  labor 
that  in  1849  she  petitioned  to  be  made  a  penal  settlement, 
and  though  at  the  instance  of  Victoria  transportation  to  the 
Australias  has  now  all  but  ceased,  Freemantle  Prison  is  still 
the  most  considerable  convict  establishment  we  possess 
across  the  seas. 


364  Greater  Britain. 

At  the  time  of  my  visit  there  were  10,000  convicts  or 
emancipists  within  the  "colony,"  of  whom  1500  were  in 
prison,  1500  in  private  service  on  tickets-of-leave,  while  1500 
had  served  out  their  time,  and  over  5000  had  been  released 
upon  conditional  pardons.  600  of  the  convicts  had  arrived 
from  England  in  1865.  Out  of  a  total  population,  free  and 
convict,  of  20,000,  the  offenders  in  the  year  had  numbered 
nearly  3500,  or  more  than  one-sixth  of  the  people,  counting 
women  and  children. 

If  twenty  years  of  convict  labor  seem  to  have  done  but 
little  for  the  settlement,  they  have  at  least  enabled  us  to 
draw  the  moral  that  transportation  and  free  immigration  can 
not  exist  side  by  side  :  the  one  element  must  overbear  and 
destroy  the  other.  In  Western  Australia  the  convicts  and 
their  keepers  form  two-thirds  of  the  whole  population,  and 
the  district  is  a  great  English  prison,  not  a  colony,  and  ex- 
ports but  a  little  wool,  a  little  sandal-wood,  and  a  little  cot- 
ton. 

"Western  Australia  is  as  unpopular  with  the  convicts  as 
with  free  settlers  :  fifty  or  sixty  convicts  have  successfully 
escaped  from  the  settlement  within  the  last  few  years.  From 
twenty  to  thirty  escapes  take  place  annually,  but  the  men 
are  usually  recaptured  within  a  month  or  two,  although  shel- 
tered by  the  people,  the  vast  majority  of  whom  are  ticket-of- 
leave  men  or  ex-convicts.  Absconders  receive  a  hundred 
lashes  and  one  year  in  the  chain-gang,  yet  from  sixty  to  sev- 
enty unsuccessful  attempts  are  reported  every  year. 

On  the  road  between  Albany  and  Hamilton  I  saw  a  man 
at  work  in  ponderous  irons.  The  sun  was  striking  down  on 
him  in  a  way  that  none  can  fancy  who  have  no  experience 
of  Western  Australia  or  Bengal,  and  his  labor  was  of  the 
heaviest ;  now  he  had  to  prize  up  huge  rocks  with  a  crow- 
bar, now  to  handle  pick  and  shovel;  now  to  use  the  rammer, 
under  the  eye  of  an  armed  warder,  who  idled  in  the  shade 
by  the  road-side.  This  was  an  "  escape-man,"  thus  treated 
with  a  view  to  cause  him  to  cease  his  continual  endeavors  to 
get  away  from  Albany.  No  wonder  that  the  "  chain-gang  " 
system  is  a  failure,  and  the  number  both  of  attempts  and 
actual  escapes  larger  under  it  than  before  the  introduction 
of  this  tremendous  punishment. 


Transportation.  365 

Many  of  the  "  escapes  "  are  made  with  no  other  view  than 
to  obtain  a  momentary  change  of  scene.  On  the  last  return 
trip  of  the  ship  in  which  I  sailed  from  Adelaide  to  King 
George's  Sound  a  convict  coal-man  was  found  built  up  in  the 
coal  heap  on  deck:  he  and  his  mates  at  Albany  had  drawn 
lots  to  settle  which  of  them  should  be  thus  packed  off  by 
the  help  of  the  others  "  for  a  change."  Of  ultimate  escape 
there  could  be  no  chance  ;  the  coal  on  deck  could  not  fail  to 
be  exhausted  within  a  day  or  two  after  leaving  port,  and 
this  they  knew.  When  he  emerged,  black,  half-smothered, 
and  nearly  starved,  from  his  hiding-place,  he  allowed  himself 
to  be  quietly  ironed,  and  so  kept  till  the  ship  reached  Ade- 
laide- when  he  was  given  up  to  the  authorities,  and  sent  back 
to  Albany  for  punishment.  Acts  of  this  class"  are  common 
enough  to  have  received  a  name.  The  offenders  are  called 
"  bolters  for  a  change." 

A  convict  has  been  known,  when  marching  in  his  gang, 
suddenly  to  lift  up  his  spade  and  split  the  skull  of  the  man 
who  walked  in  front  of  him,  thus  courting  a  certain  death 
for  no  reason  but  to  escape  from  the  monotony  of  toil.  An- 
other has  doubled  his  punishment  for  fun  by  calling  out  to 
the  magistrates:  "Gentlemen,  pray  remember  that  I  am  en- 
titled to  an  iron-gang,  because  this  is  the  second  time  of  my 
absconding," 

One  of  the  strangest  things  about  the  advance  of  England 
is  the  many-sided  character  of  the  form  of  early  settlement : 
Central  North  America  we  plant  with  Mormons,  New  Zea- 
land with  the  runaways  of  our  whaling-ships,  Tasmania  and 
portions  of  Australia  with  our  transported*  Jfelons.  Trans- 
portation has  gone  through  many  phases  since  the  system 
took  its  rise  in  the  exile  to  the  colonies  under  Charles  II.  of 
the  moss-troopers  of  Northumberland.  The  plan  of  forcing 
the  exiles  to  labor  as  slaves  on  the  plantations  was  introduced 
in  the  reign  of  George  II.,  and  by  an  act  then  passed  offend- 
ers were  actually  put  up  to  auction,  and  knocked  down  to 
men  who  undertook  to  transport  them,  and  make  what  they 
could  of  their  labor.  In  178G  an  Order  in  Council  named 
the  eastern  coast  of  Australia  and  the  adjacent  islands  as  the 
spot  to  which  transportation  beyond  the  seas  should  be  di- 
rected, and  in  1787  the  black  bar  wras  drawn  indelibly  across 


36G  Greater  Britain. 

the  page  of  history  which  records  the  foundation  of  the  col- 
ony of  New  South  Wales.  From  that  time  to  the  present 
day  the  world  has  witnessed  the  portentous  sight  of  great 
countries  in  which  the  major  portion  of  the  people,  the  whole 
of  the  handicraftsmen,  are  convicted  felons. 

There  being  no  free  people  whatever  in  the  "colonics" 
when  first  formed,  the  governors  had  no  choice  but  to  appoint 
convicts  to  all  the  official  situations.  The  consequence  was 
robbery  and  corruption,  liecorded  sentences  were  altered 
by  the  convict  clerks,  free  pardons  and  grants  of  land  Avere 
sold  for  money.  The  convict  overseers  forced  their  gangmen 
to  labor  not  for  Government,  but  for  themselves,  securing  se- 
crecy by  the  unlimited  supply  of  rum  to  the  men,  who  in 
turn  bought  native  women  with  all  that  they  could  spare. 
On  the  sheep-stations  whole  herds  were  stolen,  and  those  from 
neighboring  lands  driven  in  to  show  on  muster-days.  Enor- 
mous fortunes  were  accumulated  by  some  of  the  emanci- 
pists, by  fraud  and  infamy  rather  than  by  prudence,  we  are 
told,  and  a  vast  number  of  convicts  were  soon  at  large  in 
Sydney  town  itself,  without  the  knowledge  of  the  police. 
As  the  settlements  waxed  in  years  and  size,  the  sons  of  con- 
vict parents  grew  up  in  total  ignorance,  while  such  few  free 
settlers  as  arrived — "  the  ancients,"  as  they  were  styled,  or 
"  the  ancient  nobility  of  Botany  Bay  " — were  wholly  depend- 
ent on  convict  tutors  for  the  education  of  their  children — the 
"  corn-stalks  "  and  "  currency  girls  ;"  and  cock-fighting  was 
the  chief  amusement  of  both  sexes.  The  newspapers  were 
without  exception  conducted  by  gentlemen  convicts,  or  "  spe- 
cials," as  they  were  called,  who  were  assigned  to  the  editors 
for  that  purpose,  and  the  police  force  itself  was  composed  of 
ticket-of-leave  men  and  "  emancipists."  Convicts  were  thus 
the  only  school-masters,  the  only  governesses,  the  only  nurses, 
the  only  journalists,  and,  as  there  Avere  even  convict  clergy- 
men and  convict  university  professors,  the  training  of  the 
youth  of  the  land  was  committed  almost  exclusively  to  the 
felon's  care. 

A  petition  sent  home  from  Tasmania  in  1848  4s  simple 
and  pathetic ;  it  is  from  the  parents  and  guardians  resident 
in  Van  Diemen's  Land.  They  set  forth  that  there  are  13,000 
children  growing  up  in  the  colony,  that  within  six  years  alone 


Transportation.  367 

24,000  convicts  have  been  turned  into  the  island,  and  of 
these  but  4000  women.  The  result  is  that  their  children  are 
brought  up  in  the  midst  of  profligacy  and  degradation. 

The  lowest  depth  of  villainy,  if  in  such  universal  infamy 
degrees  can  be  conceived,  was  to  be  met  with  in  the  parties 
working  In  the  "chain-gangs"  on  the  roads.  "Assignees" 
too  bad  even  for  the  whip  of  the  harshest,  or  the  "  beef  and 
beer"  of  the  most  lenient  master,  brutalized  still  further,  if 
that  were  possible,  by  association  with  those  as  vile  as  them- 
selves, and  followed  about  the  country  by  women  too  infa- 
mous even  for  service  in  the  houses  of  the  up-country  settlers 
or  in  the  gin-palaces  of  the  towns,  worked  in  gangs  upon  the 
roads  by  day,  whenever  promises  of  spirits  or  the  hope  of  to- 
bacco could  induce  them  to  work  at  all,  and  found  a  compen- 
sation for  such  unusual  toil  in  nightly  quitting  their  camp,  and 
traversing  the  country,  robbing  and  murdering  those  they 
met,  and  sacking  every  homestead  that  lay  in  their  track. 

The  clerk  in  charge  of  one  of  the  great  convict  barracks 
was  himself  a  convict,  and  had  an  understanding  with  the 
men  under  his  care  that  they  might  prowl  about  at  night 
and  rob,  on  condition  that  they  should  share  their  gains  with 
him,  and  that,  if  they  were  found  out,  he  should  himself  pros- 
ecute them  for  being  absent  without  leave.  Juries  were  com- 
posed either  of  convicts  or  of  publicans  dependent  on  the 
convicts  for  their  livelihood,  and  convictions  were  of  neces- 
sity extremely  rare.  In  a  plain  case  of  murder  the  judge  was 
known  to  say, "  If  I  don't  attend  to  the  recommendation  to 
mercy  these  fellows  will  never  find  a  man  guilty  again ;" 
and  jurymen  would  frequently  hand  down  notes  to  the  coun- 
sel for  the  defense,  and  bid  him  give  himself  no  trouble,  as 
they  intended  to  acquit  their  friend. 

The  lawyers  were  mostly  convicts,  and  perjury  in  the 
courts  was  rife.  It  has  been  given  in  evidence  before  a  Roy- 
al Commission  by  a  magistrate  of  New  South  Wales  that  a 
Sydney  free  immigrant  once  had  a  tailor's  bill  sent  in  which 
he  did  not  owe,  he  having  been  but  a  few  weeks  in  the  colony. 
He  instructed  a  lawyer,  and  did  not  himself  appear  in  court. 
He  afterward  heard  that  he  had  won  his  case,  for  the  tailor 
had  sworn  to  the  bdl,  but  the  immigrant's  lawyer, "  to  save 
trouble,"  had  called  a  witness  who  swore  to  having  paid  it, 


368  Greater  Britain. 

which  settled  the  case.  Sometimes  there  were  not  only  con- 
vict witnesses  and  convict  jurors,  but  convict  judges. 

The  assignment  system  was  supposed  to  be  a  great  im- 
provement upon  the  jail,  but  its  only  certain  result  was  that 
convict  master  and  convict  man  used  to  get  drunk  together, 
while  a  night  never  passed  without  a  burglary  in  Sydney. 
Many  of  the  convicts'  mistresses  went  out  from  England  as 
Government  free  emigrants,  taking  with  them  funds  sub- 
scribed by  the  thieves  at  home  and  money  obtained  by  the 
robberies  for  which  their  "fancy  men"  had  been  convicted, 
and  on  their  arrival  at  Sydney  succeeded  in  getting  their 
paramours  assigned  to  them  as  convict  servants.  Such  was 
the  disparity  of  the  sexes  that  the  term  "  wife  "  was  a  mock- 
ery, and  the  Female  Emigration  Society  and  the  Govern- 
ment vied  with  each  other  in  sending  out  to  Sydney  the 
worst  women  in  all  London  to  re-enforce  the  ranks  of  the 
convict  girls  of  the  Paramatta  factory.  Even  among  the 
free  settlers  marriage  soon  became  extremely  rare.  Convicts 
were  at  the  head  of  the  colleges  and  benevolent  asylums ; 
the  custom-house  officials  were  all  convicts ;  one  of  the  oc- 
cupants of  the  office  of  attorney-general  took  for  his  clerk  a 
notorious  convict,  who  was  actually  re-committed  to  Bath- 
urst  after  his  appointment,  and  yet  allowed  to  return  to  Syd- 
ney and  resume  his  duties. 

The  most  remarkable  peculiarity  of  the  assignment  sys- 
tem was  its  gross  uncertainty.  Some  assigned  convicts 
spent  their  time  working  for  high  wages,  living  and  drink- 
ing-with  their  masters;  others  were  mere  slaves.  Whether, 
however,  he  be  in  practice  well  or  ill  treated,  in  the  assign- 
ment or  apprenticeship  system  the  convict  is,  under  whatever 
name,  a  slave,  subject  to  the  caprice  of  a  master  who,  though 
he  can  not  himself  flog  his  "servant,"  can  have  him  flogged 
by  writing  a  note  or  sending  his  compliments  to  his  neigh- 
bor the  magistrate  on  the  next  run  or  farm.  The  "whip- 
ping-houses "  of  Mississippi  and  Alabama  had  their  parallel 
in  New  South  Wales ;  a  look  or  word  would  cause  the  hur- 
rying of  the  servant  to  the  post  or  the  forge  as  a  prelimina- 
ry to  a  month  in  the  chain-gang  "  on  the  roads."  On  the 
other  hand,  under  the  assignment  system  nothing  can  pre- 
vent skilled  convict  workmen  being  paid  and  pampered  by 


Transportation.  369 

their  masters,  whose  interest  it  evidently  becomes  to  get  out 
of  them  all  the  work  possible  by  excessive  indulgence,  as  in- 
telligent labor  can  not  be  produced  through  the  machinery 
of  the  whipping-post,  but  may  be  through  that  of  "  beef  and 
beer." 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  true  interest  of  the  free  sct- 
tlei*s,  cruelty  was  in  practice  commoner  than  indulgence. 
Fifty  and  a  hundred  lashes,  months  of  solitary  confinement, 
years  of  labor  in  chains  on  the  roads,  were  laid  upon  convicts 
for  such  petty  offenses  as  brawling,  drunkenness,  and  diso- 
bedience. In  1835,  among  the  28,000  convicts  then  in  New 
South  Wales,  there  were  22,000  summary  convictions  for  dis- 
orderly or  dishonest  conduct,  and  in  a  year  the  average  was 
3000  floggings  and  above  100,000  lashes.  In  Tasmania, 
where  the  convicts  then  numbered  15,000,  the  summary  con- 
victions were  15,000,  and  the  lashes  50,000  a  year. 

The  criminal  returns  of  Tasmania  and  New  South  Wales 
contain  the  condemnation  of  the  transportation  system.  In 
the  single  year  of  1834  one-seventh  of  the  free  population 
of  Van  Diemen's  Land  were  summarily  convicted  of  drunk- 
enness. In  that  year,  in  a  population  of  37,000, 15,000  were 
convicted  before  the  courts  for  various  offenses.  Over  a 
hundred  persons  a  year  were  at  that  time  sentenced  to  death 
in  New  South  Wales  alone.  Less  than  a  fourth  of  the  con- 
victs served  their  time  without  incurring  additional  punish- 
ment from  the  police,  but  those  who  thus  escaped  proved  in 
after-life  the  worst  of  all,  and  even  Government  officials  were 
forced  into  admitting  that  transportation  demoralized  far 
more  persons  than  it  reformed.  Hundreds  of  assigned  con- 
victs made  their  escape  to  the  back  country,  and  became 
bush-rangers  ;  many  got  down  to  the  coast,  and  crossed  to 
the  Pacific  islands,  whence  they  spread  the  infamies  of  New 
South  Wales  throughout  all  Polynesia.  A  Select  Commit- 
tee of  the  House  of  Commons  reported,  in  words  characteris- 
tic of  our  race,  that  these  convicts  committed,  in  New  Zea- 
land and  the  Pacific,  "outrages  at  which  humanity  shud- 
ders," and  wdiich  were  to  be  deplored  as  being  "  injurious  to 
our  commercial  interests  in  that  quai'ter  of  the  globe." 

Transportation  to  New  South  Wales  came  to  its  end  none 
too  soon  :  in  fifty  years  75,000  convicts  had  been  transport- 

Q2 


370  Greater  Britain. 

ed  to  that  colony,  and  30,000  to  the  little  Island  of  Tasmania 
in  twenty  years. 

Were  there  no  other  argument  for  the  discontinuance  of 
transportation,  it  would  be  almost  enough  to  say  that  the 
life  in  the  convict-ship  itself  makes  the  reformation  of  trans- 
ported criminals  impossible.  Where  many  bad  men  are 
brought  together,  the  few  not  wholly  corrupt  who  may  be 
among  them  have  no  opportunity  for  speech,  and  the  grain 
of  good  that  may  exist  in  every  heart  can  have  no  chance 
for  life ;  if  not  inclination,  pride  at  least  leads  the  "  old  hand  " 
to  put  down  all  acts  that  are  not  vile,  all  words  that  are  not 
obscene.  Those  who  have  sailed  in  convict  company  say 
that  there  is  something  terrible  in  the  fiendish  delight  that 
the  "  old  hands  "  take  in  watching  the  steady  degradation  of 
the  "  new  chums."  The  hardened  criminals  invariably  meet 
the  less  vile  with  outrage,  ridicule,  and  contempt,  and  the 
better  men  soon  succumb  to  ruffians  who  have  crime  for  their 
profession,  and  for  all  their  relaxation  vice. 

To  describe  the  horrors  of  the  convict-ships,  we  are  told, 
wTould  be  impossible.  The  imagination  will  scarce  suffice  to 
call  up  dreams  so  hideous.  Four  months  of  filthiness  in  a 
floating  hell  sink  even  the*least  bad  to  the  level  of  unteach- 
able  brutality.  Mutiny  is  unknown ;  the  convicts  are  their 
own  masters  and  the  ship's,  but  the  shrewd  callousness  of 
the  old  jail-bird  teaches  all  that  there  is  nothing  to  be  gain- 
ed even  by  momentary  success.  Rage  and  violence  are  sel- 
dom seen,  but  there  is  a  humor  that  is  worse  than  blows — 
conversation  that  transcends  all  crime  in  infamy. 

It  will  be  long  before  the  last  traces  of  convict  disease  dis- 
appear from  Tasmania  and  New  South  Wales ;  the  gold-find 
has  done  much  to  purify  the  air,  free  selection  may  lead  to  a 
still  more  bright  advance,  manufacturing  may  lend  its  help ; 
but  years  must  go  by  before  Tasmania  can  be  prosperous  or 
Sydney  moral.  Their  history  is  not  only  valuable  as  a  guide 
to  those  Avho  have  to  save  West  Australia,  as  General  Bourke 
and  Mr.  Wentworth  saved  New  South  Wales,  but  as  an  ex- 
ample, not  picked  from  ancient  rolls,  but  from  the  records 
of  a  system  founded  within  the  memory  of  living  man,  and 
still  existent,  of  what  transportation  must  necessarily  be,  and 
what  it  may  easily  become. 


Transportation.  371 

The  results  of  a  dispassionate  survey  of  the  transportation 
system  in  the  abstract  are  far  from  satisfactory.  If  deporta- 
tion be  considered  as  a  punishment,  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a 
worse.  Punishment  should  be  equable,  reformatory,  deter- 
rent, cheap.  Transportation  is  the  most  costly  of  all  the  pun- 
ishments that  arc  known  to  us ;  it  is  subject  to  variations  that 
can  not  be  guarded  against ;  it  is  severest  to  the  least  guilty, 
and  slightest  to  the  most  hardened ;  it  morally  destroys  those 
who  have  some  good  remaining  in  them ;  it  leaves  the  ruffian- 
ly malefactor  worse  if  possible  than  it  finds  him ;  and,  while  it 
is  frightfully  cruel  and  vindictive  in  its  character,  it  is  use- 
less as  a  deterrent  because  its  nature  is  unknown  at  home. 
Transportation  to  the  English  thief  means  exile,  and  nothing 
more  ;  it  is  only  after  conviction,  when  far  away  from  his  un- 
caught  associates,  that  he  comes  to  find  it  worse  than  death. 
Instead  of  deterring,  transportation  tempts  to  crime  ;  instead 
of  reforming,  it  debases  the  bad,  and  confirms  in  villainy  the 
already  infamous.  To  every  bad  man  it  gives  the  worst 
companions ;  the  infamous  are  to  be  reformed  by  association 
with  the  vile ;  while  its  effects  upon  the  colonies  are  described 
in  every  petition  of  the  settlers,  and  testified  to  by  the  whole 
history  of  our  plantations  in  the  antipodes,  and  by  the  pres- 
ent condition  of  West  Australia.  We  have  come  at  last  to 
transportation  in  its  most  limited  and  restricted  sense ;  the 
only  remaining  step  is  to  be  quit  of  it  altogether. 

In  conjunction  with  all  punishment  we  should  secure  some 
means  of  separating  the  men  one  from  another  as  soon  as  the 
actual  punishment  is  terminated  :  to  settle  them  on  land,  to 
settle  them  with  wives  where  possible,  should  be  our  object. 
The  work  which  really  has  in  it  something  of  reformation  is 
that  which  a  man  has  to  do,  not  in  order  that  he  may  avoid 
whipping,  but  that  he  may  escape  starvation  ;  and  it  is  from 
this  point  of  view  that  transportation  is  defensible.  A  man, 
however  bad,  will  generally  become  a  useful  member  of  soci- 
ety and  a  not  altogether  neglectful  father  if  allowed  to  set- 
tle upon  land  away  from  his  old  companions  ;  but  morbid 
tendencies  of  every  kind  are  strengthened  by  close  associa- 
tion with  others  who  are  laboring  under  a  like  infirmity  : 
and  where  the  former  convicts  arc  allowed  to  hang  together 
in  towns  nothing  is  to  be  expected  better  than  that  which  is 


372  Greater  Britain. 

actually  found — namely,  a  state  of  society  where  wives  speed- 
ily become  as  villainous  as  their  husbands,  and  where  chil- 
dren are  brought  up  to  emulate  their  fathers'  crimes. 

To  keep  the  men  separate  from  each  other  after  the  expi- 
ration of  the  sentence,  we  need  to  send  the  convicts  to  a  fair- 
ly populous  country,  whence  arises  this  great  difficulty  :  if  we 
send  convicts  to  a  populous  colony  we  are  met  at  once  by  a 
cry  that  we  are  forcing  the  workmen  of  the  colony  into  a  one- 
sided competition ;  that  we  are  offering  an  unbearable  insult 
to  the  free  population  ;  that,  in  attempting  to  reform  the  fel- 
on by  allowing  him  to  be  absorbed  into  the  colonial  society, 
we  are  degrading  and  corrupting  the  whole  community  on 
the  chance  of  possible  benefit  to  our  English  villain.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  we  send  our  convicts  to  an  uninhabited  land, 
such  as  New  South  Wales  and  Tasmania  were,  such  as  West 
Australia  is  now,  we  build  up  an  artificial  Pandemonium, 
whither  Ave  convey  at  the  public  cost  the  pick  and  cream  of 
the  ruffians  of  the  world,  to  form  a  community  of  which  each 
member  must  be  sufficiently  vile  of  himself  to  corrupt  a  na- 
tion. 

If  by  care  the  difficulty  of  which  I  have  spoken  can  be 
avoided  transportation  might  be  replaced  by  short  sentences, 
solitary  confinement,  and  low  diet,  to  be  followed  by  forced 
exile,  under  regulations,  to  some  selected  colony,  such  as  the 
Ghauts  of  Eastern  Africa,  opposite  to  Madagascar,  or  the 
highlands  that  skirt  the  Zambesi  River.  Exile  after  punish- 
ment may  often  be  the  only  way  of  providing  for  convicts 
who  would  otherwise  be  forced  to  return  to  their  former 
ways.  The  difficulties  in  the  path  of  discharged  convicts 
seeking  employment  are  too  terrible  for  them  not  to  accept 
joyfully  a  plan  for  emigration  to  a  country  where  they  are 
unknown. 

In  Western  Australia  transportation  has  not  been  made 
subservient  to  colonization,  and  both  in  consequence  have 
failed. 

On  going  on  board  the  Bombay  at  King  George's  Sound, 
I  at  once  found  myself  in  the  East.  The  captain's  crew  of 
Malays,  the  native;  cooks  in  long  white  gowns,  the  Bombay 
serangs  in  dark-blue  turbans,  red  cummerbunds,  and  green  or 
yellow  trowsers;  the  negro  or  Abyssinian  stokers;  the  pas 


Australia.  373 

scngers  in  coats  of  China-grass ;  the  Hindoo  deck-swcepcrs 
playing  on  their  tomtoms  in  the  intervals  ol  work ;  the  punk- 
ahs below ;  the  Hindostanee  names  for  every  thing  on  deck ; 
and,  above  all,  the  general  indolence  of  every  body,  all  told 
of  a  new  world. 

A  convict  clerk  superintended  the  coaling,  which  took 
place  before  we  left  the  harbor  for  Ceylon,  and  I  remarked 
that  the  dejection  of  his  countenance  exceeded  that  of  the 
felon-laborers  who  worked  in  irons  on  the  quay.  There  is  a 
wide-spread  belief  in  England  that  unfair  favor  is  shown  to 
"  gentlemen  convicts."  This  is  simply  not  the  case  ;  every 
educated  prisoner  is  employed  at  in-door  work,  for  which  he 
is  suited,  and  not  at  road-making,  in  which  he  might  be  use- 
less ;  but  there  are  few  cases  in  which  he  would  not  wish  to 
exchange  a  position  full  of  hopeless  degradation  for  that  of 
an  out-door  laborer,  who  passes  through  his  daily  routine 
drudgery  (far  from  the  prison)  unknown,  and  perhaps  in  his 
fancy  all  but  free.  The  longing  to  change  the  mattock  for 
the  pen  is  the  result  of  envy,  and  confined  to  those  who,  if 
listened  to,  would  prove  incapable  of  pursuing  the  pen-driver's 
occupation. 

Under  a  fair  and  freshening  breeze  we  left  the  port  of  Al- 
bany, happy  to  escape  from  a  jail  the  size  of  India,  even  those 
of  us  who  had  been  forced  to  pass  only  a  few  days  in  West 
Australia. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

AUSTRALIA. 

Pacing  the  deck  with  difficulty  as  the  ship  tore  through 
the  lava-covered  seas  before  a  favoring  gale  that  caught  us 
off  Cape  Lewin,  some  of  us  discussed  the  prospects  of  the 
great  Southland  as  a  whole. 

In  Australia,  it  is  often  said,  we  have  a  second  America  in 
its  infancy  ;  but  it  maybe  doubted  whether  we  have  not  be- 
come so  used  to  trace  the  march  of  empire  on  a  westward 
course,  through  Persia  and  Assyria,  Greece  and  Rome,  then 
by  Germany  to  England  and  America,  that  we  are  too  readily 
prepared  to  accept  the  probability  of  its  onward  course  to 
the  Pacific. 


o74  Greater  Britain. 

The  progress  of  Australia  has  been  singularly  rapid.  In 
1830  her  population  was  under  40,000;  in  18G0  it  numbered 
1,500,000  ;  nevertheless  it  is  questionable  how  far  the  prog- 
ress will  continue.  The  natural  conditions  of  America  in 
Australia  are  exactly  reversed.  All  the  best  lands  of  Aus- 
tralia are  on  her  coast,  and  these  are  already  taken  up  by 
settlers.  Australia  has  three-quarters  the  area  of  Europe, 
but  it  is  doubtful  whether  she  will  ever  support  a  dense  pop- 
ulation throughout  even  half  her  limits.  The  uses  of  the 
northern  territory  have  yet  to  be  discovered,  and  the  interior 
of  the  continent  is  far  fi-om  being  tempting  to  the  settler. 
Upon  the  whole,  it  seems  likely  that  almost  all  the  imperfect- 
ly-known regions  of  Australia  will  in  time  be  occupied  by  pas- 
toral Crown  tenants,  but  that  the  area  of  agricultural  opera- 
tions is  not  likely  to  admit  of  indefinite  extension.  The  cen- 
tral district  of  Australia,  to  the  extent,  perhaps,  of  half  the 
entire  continent,  lies  too  far  north  for  winter  rains,  too  far 
south  for  tropical  wet  seasons,  and  in  these  vast  solitudes  ag- 
riculture may  be  pronounced  impossible,  sheep-farming  dim- 
cult.  There  will  be  no  difficulty  in  retaining  in  tanks,  or  rais- 
ing by  means  of  wells  sufficient  water  for  sheep  and  cattle, 
stations,  and  the  wool,  tallow,  and  even  meat,  will  be  carried 
by  those  railways  for  which  the  country  is  admirably  fitted, 
while  the  construction  of  locks  upon  the  Murray  and  its  trib- 
utaries will  enable  steamers  to  carry  the  whole  trade  of  the 
Riverina.  So  far,  all  is  well,  but  the  arable  lands  of  Austra- 
lia are  limited  by  the  rains,  and  apparently  the  limit  is  a  sad- 
ly narrow  one. 

Once  in  a  Avhile  a  heavy  winter1  rain  falls  in  the  interior  ; 
grass  springs  up,  the  lagoons  are  filled,  the  up-country  squat- 
ters make  their  fortunes,  and  all  goes  prosperously  for  a  time. 
Accounts  reach  the  coast  cities  of  the  astonishing  fertility  of 
the  interior,  and  hundreds  of  settlers  set  off  to  the  remotest 
districts.  Two  or  three  years  of  drought  then  follow,  and 
all  the  more  enterprising  squatters  are  soon  ruined,  with  a 
gain,  however,  sometimes  of  a  few  thousand  square  miles  of 
country  to  civilization. 

Hitherto  the  Australians  have  not  made  so  much  as  they 
should  have  done  of  the  country  that  is  within  their  reach. 
The  want  of  railroads  is  incredible.     Tlicre   are  but  some 


Australia.  375 

400  miles  of  railway  in  all  Australia — far  less  than  the  amount 
possessed,  by  the  single  infant  State  of  Wisconsin.  The  sums 
spent  upon  the  Victorian  lines  have  deterred  the  colonists 
from  completing  their  railway  system.  £10,000,000  sterling 
were  spent  upon  200  miles  of  road,  through  easy  countiy  in 
which  the  land  cost  nothing.  The  United  States  have  made 
nearly  40,000  miles  of  railroad  for  less  than  £300,000,000 
sterling ;  Canada  made  her  2000  miles  for  £20,000,000,  or 
ten  times  as  much  railroad  as  Victoria,  for  only  twice  the 
money.  Cuba  has  already  more  miles  of  railroad  than  all 
Australia. 

Small  as  are  the  inhabited  portions  of  Australia  when 
compared  with  the  corresponding  divisions  of  the  United 
States,  this  countiy  nevertheless  is  huge  enough.  The  part 
of  Queensland  already  peopled  is  five  times  larger  than  the 
United  Kingdom.  South  Australia  and  West  Australia  are 
each  of  them  nearly  as  large  as  British  India,  but  of  these 
colonies  the  greater  part  is  desert.  Fertile  Victoria,  the  size 
of  Great  Britain,  is  only  a  thirty-fourth  part  of  Australia. 

In  face  of  the  comparatively  small  amount  of  good  agri- 
cultural country  known  to  exist  in  Australia  the  dispropor- 
tionate size  of  the  great  cities  shows  out  more  clearly  than 
ever.  •  Even  Melbourne,  when  it  comes  to  be  examined,  has 
too  much  the  air  of  a  magnified  Hobarton,  of  a  city  with  no 
country  at  its  back,  of  a  steam-hammer  set  up  to  crack  nuts. 
Queensland  is  at  pi*esent  free  from  the  burden  of  gigantic 
cities,  but  then  Queensland  is  subject  to  the  greater  danger 
of  becoming  what  is  in  reality  a  slave  republic. 

Moi-ally  and  intellectually,  at  all  events,  the  colonies  are 
thriving.  A  literature  is  springing  up,  a  national  character 
is  being  grafted  upon  the  good  English  stock.  What  i-liape 
the  Australian  mind  will  take  is  at  present  somewhat  doubt- 
ful. In  addition  to  considerable  shrewdness  and  a  purely 
Saxon  capacity  and  willingness  to  combine  for  local  objects, 
Ave  find  in  Australia  an  admirable  love  of  simple  mirth  and 
a  serious  distaste  for  prolonged  labor  in  one  direction,  while 
the  downrightness  and  determination  in  the  pursuit  of  truth, 
remarkable  in  America,  are  less  notic'eable  here. 

The  extravagance  begotten  of  the  tradition  of  convict 
times  has  not  been  without  effect,  and  the  settlers  waste  an- 


376  Greater  Britain. 

nually,  it  is  computed,  food  which  would  support  in  Europe 
a  population  of  twice  their  numbers.  This  wastefulness  is, 
however,  in  some  degree  a  consequence  of  the  necessary 
habits  of  a  pastoral  people.  The  8000  tons  of  tallow  export- 
ed annually  by  the  Australias  are  said  to  represent  the  boil- 
ing down  of  sheep  enough  to  feed  half  a  million  of  people  for 
a  twelvemonth. 

Australian  manners,  like  the  American,  resemble  the 
French  rather  than  the  British — a  resemblance  traceable, 
perhaps,  to  the  essential  democracy  of  Australia,  America, 
and  France.  One  surface-point  which  catches  the  eye  in  any 
Australian  ball-room  or  on  any  race-course  is  clearly  to  be 
referred  to  the  habit  of  mind  produced  by  democracy — the 
fact,  namely,  that  the  women  dress  with  great  expense  and 
care,  the  men  with  none  whatever.  This,  as  a  rule,  is  true 
o.f  Americans,  Australians,  and  French. 

Unlike  as  are  the  Australians  to  the  British,  there  is  never- 
theless a  singular  mimicry  of  British  forms  and  ceremonies 
in  the  colonies,  which  is  extended  to  the  most  trifling  details 
of  public  life.  Twice  in  Australia  was  I  invited  to  ministe- 
rial dinners,  given  to  mark  the  approaching  close  of  the  ses- 
sion ;  twice  also  was  I  present  at  university  celebrations,  in 
which  home  whimsicalities  were  closely  copied.  The  gov- 
ernors' messages  to  the  Colonial  Parliaments  are  travesties 
of  those  which  custom  in  England  leads  us  to  call  "the 
queen's."  The  very  phraseology  is  closely  followed.  We 
find  Sir  J.  Manners  Sutton  gravely  saying,  "  The  represent- 
atives of  the  Government  of  New  South  Wales  and  of  friy 
Government  have  agreed  to  an  arrangement  on  the  border 
duties  .  .  ."  The  "  my  "  in  a  democratic  country  like  Vic- 
toria strikes  a  stranger  as  pre-eminently  incongruous,  if  not 
absurd. 

The  imitation  of  Cambridge  forms  by  the  University  of 
Sydney  is  singularly  close.  One  almost  exj)ects  to  see  the 
familiar  blue  gown  of  the  "bull-dog"  thrown  across  the  arm 
of  the  first  college  servant  met  within  its  precincts.  Chan- 
cellor, Vice-chancellor,  Senate,  Syndicates,  and  even  Proc- 
tors, all  are  here  in  the  antipodes.  Registrar,  professors, 
"  seniors,"  fees,  fines,  and  "  petitions  with  the  University 
seal  attached;"   "Board  of  Classical  Studies" — the  whole 


Australia.  377 

corporation  sits  in  borrowed  plumage;  the  very  names  of 
the  colleges  are  being  imitated  :  we  find  already  a  St.  John's. 
The  Calendar  reads  like  a  parody  on  the  volume  issued  every 
March  by  Messrs.  Deighton.  Rules  upon  matriculation,  upon 
the  granting  of  testamurs;  prize-books  stamped  with  college 
arms  are  named ;  ad  eundem  degrees  are  knoAvn ;  and  we 
have  imitations  of  phraseology  even  in  the  announcement  of 
prizes  to  "  the  most  distinguished  candidates  for  honors  in 
each  of  the  aforesaid  schools,"  and  in  the  list  of  subjects  for 
the  Moral  Science  tripos.  Lent  Term,  Trinity  Term,  Mich- 
aelmas Term  take  the  place  of  the  Spring,  Summer,  and  Fall 
Terms  of  the  less  pretentious  institutions  in  America,  and 
the  height  of  absurdity  is  reached  in  the  regulations  upon 
"  academic  costume,"  and  on  the  "  respectful  salutation  "  by 
undei'-graduates  of  the  "  felloAvs  and  professors  "  of  the  Uni- 
versity. The  situation  on  a  hot-wind  day  of  a  member  of 
the  Senate,  in  "  black  silk  gown,  with  hood  of  scarlet  cloth 
edged  with  white  fur  and  lined  with  blue  silk,  black  velvet 
trencher  cap,"  all  in  addition  to  his  ordinary  clothing,  it  is  to 
be  presumed,  can  be  imagined  only  by  those  who  know  what 
hot  winds  are.  We  English  are  great  acclimatizers :  we 
have  carried  trial  by  jury  to  Bengal,  tenant-right  to  Oude, 
and  caps  and  gowns  to  be  worn  over  loongee  and  paejama  at 
Calcutta  UnhTersity.  Who  are  we,  that  we  should  cry  out 
against  the  French  for  "  carrying  France  about  with  them 
everywhere  ?" 

The  objects  of  the  founders  are  set  forth  in  the  charter  as 
"  the  advancement  of  religion  and  morality,  and  the  promo- 
tion of  useful  knowledge ;"  but  as  there  is  no  theological  fac- 
ulty, no  religious  test  or  exercise  whatever,  the  philosophy 
of  the  first  portion  of  the  phrase  is  not  easily  understood. 

In  no  Western  institutions  is  the  radicalism  ol  Western 
thought  so  thoroughly  manifested  as  in  the  universities ;  in 
no  English  colonial  institutions  is  conservatism  so  manifest. 
The  contrast  between  Michigan  and  Sydney  is  far  more  strik- 
ing than  that  between  Harvard  and  old  Cambridge. 

Of  the  religious  position  of  Australia  there  is  little  to  be 
said :  the  Wesleyans,  Catholics,  and  Presbyterians  are  strong- 
er, and  the  other  denominations  weaker,  than  they  are  at 
home.     The  general  mingling  of  incongruous  objects  and  of 


378  Greater  Britain. 

conflicting  races,  characteristic  of  colonial  life,  extends  to  re- 
ligious buildings.  The  graceful  Wesleyan  church,  the  Chi- 
nese joss-house,  and  the  Catholic  cathedral  stand  not  far 
apart  in  Melbourne.  In  Australia  the  mixture  of  blood  is  not 
yet  great.  In  South  Australia,  where  it  is  most  complete, 
the  Catholics  and  Wesleyans  have  great  strength.  Angli- 
canism is  naturally  strongest  where  the  race  is  most  exclu- 
sively British — in  Tasmania  and  New  South  Wales. 

As  far  as  the  coast-tracts  are  concerned,  Australia,  as  will 
be  seen  from  what  has  been  said  of  the  individual  colonies,  is 
rapidly  ceasing  to  be  a  land  of  great  tenancies,  and  becoming 
a  land  of  small  freeholds,  each  cultivated  by  its  owner.  It 
need  hardly  be  pointed  out  that,  in  the  interests  of  the  coun- 
try and  of  the  race,  this  is  a  happy  change.  When  English 
rural  laborers  commence  to  fully  realize  the  misery  of  their 
position  they  will  find  not  only  America,  but  Australia  also, 
open  to  them  as  a  refuge  and  future  home.  Looming  in  the 
distance,  we  still,  however,  see  the  American  problem  of 
whether  the  Englishman  can  live  out  of  England.  Can  he 
thrive  except  where  mist  and  damp  preserve  the  juices  of  his 
frame  ?  He  comes  from  the  fogs  of  the  Baltic  shores  and 
from  the  Flemish  lowlands ;  gains  in  vigor  in  the  south  island 
of  New  Zealand.  In  Australia  and  America — hot  and  dry — 
the  type  has  already  changed.    Will  it  eventually  disappear? 

It  is  still  an  open  question  whether  the  change  of  type 
amono-  the  English  in  America  and  Australia  is  a  climatic 
adaptation  on  the  part  of  nature,  or  a  temporary  divergence 
produced  by  abnormal  causes,  and  capable  of  being  modi- 
fied by  care. 

Before  we  had  done  our  talk  the  ship  was  pooped  by  a 
green  sea,  which,  curling  in  over  her  taffrail,  swept  her  decks 
from  end  to  end,  and  our  helmsmen,  although  regular  old 
"  hard-a-weather"  fellows,  had  difficulty  in  keeping  her  upon 
her  course.  It  was  the  last  of  the  gale,  and  when  we  made 
up  our  beds  upon  the  skylights  the  heavens  were  clear  of 
scud,  though  the  moon  was  still  craped  with  a  ceaseless  roll 
of  cloud. 


Colonies.  379 


CHAPTER  XV. 

COLONIES. 

When  a  Briton  takes  a  survey  of  the  colonies  he  finds 
much  matter  for  surprise  in  the  one-sided  nature  of  the  part- 
nership which  exists  between  the  mother  and  the  daughter 
lauds.  No  reason  presents  itself  to  him  why  our  artisans 
and  merchants  should  be  taxed  in  aid  of  populations  far 
more  wealthy  than  our  own,  who  have  not,  as  we  have,  mil- 
lions of  paupers  to  support.  We  at  present  tax  our  humblest 
classes,  we  weaken  our  defenses,  we  scatter  our  troops  and 
fleets,  and  lay  ourselves  open  to  panics  such  as  those  of  1853 
and  1859,  in  order  to  protect  against  imaginary  dangers  the 
Australian  gold-digger  and  Canadian  farmer.  There  is  some- 
thing ludicrous  in  the  idea  of  taxing  St.  Giles's  for  the  sup- 
port of  Melbourne,  and  making  Dorsetshire  agricultural  la- 
borers pay  the  cost  of  defending  New  Zealand  colonists  in 
Maori  wars. 

It  is  possible  that  the  belief  obtains  in  Britain  among  the 
least  educated  classes  of  the  community  that  colonial  ex- 
penses are  rapidly  decreasing,  if  they  have  not  already  wholly 
disappeared ;  but  in  fact  they  have  for  some  years  past  been 
steadily  and  continuously  growing  in  amount. 

As  long  as  we  choose  to  keep  up  such  propxignaeida  as 
Gibraltar,  Malta,  and  Bermuda,  we  must  pay  roundly  for 
them,  as  we  also  must  for  such  costly  luxuries  as  our  gold- 
coast  settlements  for  the  suppression  of  the  slave-trade  ;  but 
if  we  confine  the  term  "  colonies  "  to  English-speaking,  white- 
inhabited,  and  self-governed  lands,  and  exclude  on  the  one 
hand  garrisons  such  as  Gibraltar,  and  on  the  other  mere  de- 
pendencies like  the  West  Indies  and  Ceylon,  we  find  that 
our  true  colonies  in  North  America,  Australia,  Polynesia, 
and  South  Africa  involve  us  nominally  in  yearly  charges  of 
almost  two  millions  sterling,  and,  really,  in  untold  expendi- 
ture. 

Canada  is  in  all  ways  the  most  flagrant  case.  She  draws 
from  us  some  three  millions  annually  for  her  defense ;  she 


380  Greater  Britain. 

makes  no  contribution  toward  the  cost ;  she  relies  mainly  on 
us  to  defend  a  frontier  of  4000  miles,  and  she  excludes  our 
goods  by  prohibitive  duties  at  her  ports.  In  short,  colonial 
expenses  which,  rightly  or  wrongly,  our  fathers  bore  (and 
that  not  ungrudgingly)  when  they  enjoyed  a  monopoly  of 
colonial  trade,  are  borne  by  us  in  face  of  colonial  prohibition. 
What  the  true  cost  to  us  of  Canada  may  be  is  unfortunately 
an  open  question,  and  the  loss  by  the  weakening  of  our  home 
forces  we  have  no  means  of  computing ;  but  when  we  con- 
sider that,  on  a  fair  statement  of  the  case,  Canada  would  be 
debited  with  the  cost  of  a  large  portion  of  the  half-pay  and 
recruiting  services,  of  Horse  Guards  and  War-office  expenses, 
of  arms,  accoutrements,  barracks,  hospitals,  and  stores,  and 
also  with  the  gigantic  expenses  of  two  of  our  naval  squad- 
rons, we  can  not  but  admit  that  we  must  pay  at  least  three 
millions  a  year  for  the  hatred  that  the  Canadians  profess  to 
bear  toward  the  United  States.  Whatever  may  be  the  case, 
however,  with  regard  to  Canada,  less  fault  is  to  be  found 
with  the  cost  of  the  Australian  colonies.  If  they  bore  a  por- 
tion of  the  half-pay  and  recruiting  expenses,  as  well  as  the 
cost  of  the  troops  actually  employed  among  them  in  time  of 
peace,  and  also  paid  their  share  in  the  maintenance  of  the 
British  navy — a  share  to  increase  with  the  increase  of  their 
merchant  shipping — there  would  be  little  to  desire,  unless, 
indeed,  Ave  should  wish  that,  in  exchange  for  a  check  upon  im- 
perial braggadocio  and  imperial  waste,  the  Australias  should 
also  contribute  toward  the  expenses  of  imperial  wars. 

No  reason  can  be  shown  for  our  spending  millions  on  the 
defense  of  Canada  against  the  Americans,  or  in  aiding  the 
New  Zealand  colonists  against  the  Maories,  that  will  not 
apply  to  their  aiding  us  in  case  of  a  European  war  with 
France,  control  being  given  to  their  representatives  over  our 
jmblic  action  in  questions  ofimperial  concern.  Without  any 
such  control  over  imperial  action,  the  old  American  colonists 
were  well  content  to  do  their  share  of  fighting  in  imperial 
wars.  In  1689,  in  1702,  and  in  1744  Massachusetts  attacked 
the  French,  and  taking  from  them  Nova  Scotia  and  others 
of  their  new  plantations,  handed  them  over  to  Great  Britain. 
Even  when  the  tax  time  came,  Massachusetts,  while  declar- 
ing that  the  English  Parliament  had  no  risjht  to  tax  colonies, 


Colonies.  ^81 

went  on  to  say  that  the  king  could  inform  them  of  the  ex- 
igencies of  the  public  service,  and  that  they  were  ready  "  to 
provide  for  them  if  required." 

It  is  not  likely,  however,  nowadays,  that  our  colonists 
would,  for  any  long  stretch  of  time,  engage  to  aid  us  in  our 
purely  Eurojiean  wars.  Australia  would  scarcely  feel  herself 
deeply  interested  in  the  guarantee  of  Luxembourg,  nor  Can- 
ada in  the  affairs  of  Servia.  The  fact  that  we  in  Britain  paid 
our  share — or  rather  nearly  the  whole  cost — of  the  Maori 
wars  would  be  no  argument  to  an  Australian,  but  only  an 
additional  proof  to  him  of  our  extraordinary  folly.  We  have 
been  educated  into  a  habit  of  paying  with  complacency  oth- 
er people's  bills — not  so  the  Australian  settler. 

As  far  as  Australia  is  concerned,  our  soldiers  are  not  used 
as  troops  at  all.  The  colonists  like  the  show  of  the  red-coats, 
and  the  military  duties  are  made  up  partly  of  guard-of-honor 
work  and  partly  of  the  labors  of  police.  The  colonists  well 
know  that  in  time  of  war  we  should  immediately  withdraw 
our  troops,  and  they  trust  wholly  in  their  volunteers  and  the 
colonial  marine. 

As  long  as  we  choose  to  allow  the  system  to  continue,  the 
colonists  are  well  content  to  reap  the  benefit.  When  we  at 
last  decide  that  it  shall  cease  they  will  reluctantly  consent. 
It  is  more  than  doubtful  whether,  if  we  were  to  insist  to  the 
utmost  upon  our  rights  as  toward  our  southern  colonies,  they 
would  do  more  than  grumble  and  consent  to  our  demands  ; 
ami  there  is  no  chance  whatever  of  our  asking  for  more  than 
our  simple  due. 

When  you  talk  to  an  intelligent  Australian  you  can  al- 
ways see  that  he  fears  that  separation  would  be  made  the 
excuse  for  the  equipment  of  a  great  and  costly  Australian 
fleet — not  more  necessary  then  than  now — and  that,  however 
he  may  talk,  he  would,  rather  than  separate  from  England, 
at  least  do  his  duty  by  her. 

The  fear  of  conquest  of  the  Australian  colonies  if  we  left 
them  to  themselves  is  on  the  face  of  it  ridiculous.  It  is  suffi- 
cient, perhaps,  to  say  that  the  old  American  colonies,  when 
they  had  but  a  million  and  a  half  of  people,  defended  them- 
selves successfully  against  the  then  all-powerful  French,  and 
that  there  is  no  instance  of  a  self-protected  English  colony 


i>82  Greater  Britain. 

being  conquered  by  the  foreigner.  The  American  colonies 
valued  so  highly  their  independence  of  the  Old  Country  in  the 
matter  of  defense  that  they  petitioned  the  Crown  to  be  al- 
lowed to  fight  for  themselves,  and  called  the  British  army  by 
the  plain  name  of  "  grievance." 

As  for  our  so-called  defense  of  the  colonies,  in  war-time  we 
defend  ourselves;  Ave  defend  the  colonies  only  during  peace. 
In  war-time  they  are  ever  left  to  shift  for  themselves,  and 
they  would  undoubtedly  be  better  fit  to  do  so  were  they  in 
the  habit  of  maintaining  their  military  establishments  in  time 
of  peace.  The  present  system  weakens  us  and  them — us,  by 
taxes  and  by  the  withdrawal  of  our  men  and  ships  ;  the  col- 
onies, by  preventing  the  development  of  that  self-reliance 
which  is  requisite  to  form  a  nation's  greatness.  The  success- 
ful encountering  of  difficulties  is  the  marking  feature  of  the 
national  character  of  the  English,  and  we  can  hardly  expect 
a  nation  which  has  never  encountered  any,  or  which  has  been 
content  to  see  them  met  by  others,  ever  to  become  great. 
In  short,  as  matters  now  stand,  the  colonies  are  a  source  of 
military  weakness  to  us,  and  our  "protection"  of  them  is  a 
source  of  danger  to  the  colonists.  No  doubt  there  are  still 
among  us  men  Avho  would  have  wished  to  have  seen  America 
continue  in  union  with  England,  on  the  principle  on  which 
the  Russian  consents  are  chained  each  to  an  old  man — to 
keep  her  from  going  too  fast — and  who  now  consider  it  our 
duty  to  defend  our  colonies  at  whatever  cost,  on  account  of 
the  "  prestige "  which  attaches  to  the  somewhat  precarious 
tenure  of  these  great  lands.  With  such  men  it  is  impossible 
for  colonial  reformers  to  ai"gue  :  the  stand-points  are  wholly 
different.  To  those,  however,  who  admit  the  injustice  of  the 
present  system  to  the  taxpayers  of  the  mother-country,  but 
who  fear  that  her  merchants  would  suffer  by  its  disturbance, 
inasmuch  as,  in  their  belief,  action  on  our  part  would  lead  to  a 
disruption  of  the  tie,  we  may  plead  that,  even  should  separa- 
tion be  the  result,  we  should  be  none  the  worse  off  for  its  oc- 
currence. The  retention  of  colonies  at  almost  any  cost  has 
been  defended — so  far  as  it  has  been  supported  by  argument 
at  all — on  the  ground  that  the  connection  conduces  to  trade, 
to  which  argument  it  is  sufficient  to  answer  that  no  one  has 
Ter  succeeded  in  showing  what  effect  upon  trade  the  con- 


Colonies.  383 

nection  can  have,  and  that  as  excellent  examples  to  the  con- 
trary Ave  have  the  fact  that  our  trade  with  the  Ionian  Islands 
has  greatly  increased  since  their  annexation  to  the  kingdom 
of  Greece,  and  a  much  more  striking  fact  than  even  this — 
namely,  that  while  the  trade  with  England  of  the  Canadian 
Confederation  is  only  four-elevenths  of  its  total  external  trade, 
or  little  more  than  one-third,  the  English  trade  of  the  United 
States  was  in  1800  (before  the  Avar)  nearly  two-thirds  of  its 
total  external  trade,  in  1861  more  than  two-thirds,  and  in  1866 
(first  year  after  the  war)  again  four-sevenths  of  its  total 
trade.  Common  institutions,  common  freedom,  and  common 
tongue  have  evidently  far  more  to  do  with  trade  than  union 
lias  ;  and  for  purposes  of  commerce  and  civilization  America 
is  a  truer  colony  of  Britain  than  is  Canada. 

It  would  not  he  difficult,  were  it  necessary,  to  multiply  ex- 
amples whereby  to  prove  that  trade  with  a  country  does  not 
appear  to  be  affected  by  union  with  or  separation  from  it. 
Egypt  (even  when  Ave  carefully  exclude  from  the  returns  In- 
dian produce  in  transport)  sends  us  nearly  all  such  produce 
as  she  exports,  notAvithstanding  that  the  French  largely  con- 
trol the  Government,  and  that  Ave  haAre  nmch  less  footing  in 
the  country  than  the  Italians,  and  no  more  than  the  Austrians 
or  Spanish.  Our  trade  .with  Australia  means  that  the  Aus- 
tralians want  something  of  us  and  that  Ave  need  something 
of  them,  and  that  Ave  exchange  with  them  our  produce  as  Ave 
do  in  a  larger  degree  Avith  the  Americans,  the  Germans,  and 
the  French. 

The  trade  argument  being  met,  and  it  being  remembered 
that  our  colonies  are  no  more  an  outlet  for  our  surplus  popu- 
lation than  they  would  be  if  the  Great  Mogul  ruled  over 
them,  as  is  seen  by  the  fact  that  of  every  twenty  people  who 
leave  the  United  Kingdom  one  goes  to  Canada,  tAvo  to  Aus- 
tralia, and  sixteen  to  the  United  States,  we  come  to  the  "  ar- 
gument" Avhich  consists  in  the  word  "prestige."  When  ex- 
amined, this  cry  seems  to  mean  that,  in  the  opinion  of  the  at' 
terer,  extent  of  empire  is  power — a  doctrine  under  which 
Brazil  ought  to  be  nineteen  and  a  half  times,  and  China  tAven- 
ty-six  times  as  powerful  as  France.  Perhaps  the  best  ansAver 
to  the  doctrine  is  a  simple  contradiction  :  those  Avho  have  read 
history  with  most,  care  well  knoAv  that  at  all  times  extent 


384  Greater  Britain. 

of  empire  has  been  weakness.  England's  real  empire  was 
small  enough  in  1650,  yet  it  is  rather  doubtful  whether  her 
"  presiige  "  ever  reached  the  height  it  did  while  the  Crom- 
wellian  admirals  swept  the  seas.  The  idea  conveyed  by  the 
words  u  mother  of  free  nations  "  is  every  bit  as  good  as  that 
contained  in  the  cry  "  prestige,"  and  the  argument  that,  as 
the  colonists  are  British  subjects,  we  have  no  right  to  cast 
them  adrift  so  long  as  they  wish  to  continue  citizens,  is  evi- 
dently no  answer  to  those  who  merely  urge  that  the  colonists 
should  pay  their  own  policemen. 

It  may,  perhaps,  be  contended  that  the  possession  of  "  col- 
onies" tends  to  preserve  us  from  the  curse  of  small  island 
countries,  the  dwarfing  of  mind  which  would  otherwise  make 
tis  Guernsey  a  little  magnified.  If  this  be  true,  it  is  a  pow- 
erful argument  in  favor  of  continuance  in  the  present  system. 
It  is  a  question,  however,  whether  our  real  preservation  from 
the  insularity  we  deprecate  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  posses- 
sion of  true  colonies — of  plantations  such  as  America,  in 
short — rather  than  in  that  of  mere  dependencies.  That 
which  raises  us  above  the  provincialism  of  citizenship  of  little 
England  is  our  citizenship  of  the  greater  Saxondom  which 
includes  all  that  is  best  and  wisest  in  the  world. 

From  the  foundation  separation  would  be  harmless,  does 
not  of  necessity  follow  the  conclusion  separation  is  to  be  de- 
sired. This  much  only  is  clear — that  we  need  not  hesitate  to 
demand  that  Australia  should  do  her  duty. 

With  the  more  enlightened  thinkers  of  England  separa- 
tion from  the  colonies  has  for  many  years  been  a  favorite 
idea,  but  as  regards  the  Australias  it  would  hardly  be  advis- 
able. If  Ave  allow  that  it  is  to  the  interest  both  of  our  race 
and  of  the  world  that  the  Australias  should  prosper,  we  have 
to  ask  whether  they  would  do  so  in  a  higher  degree  if  sepa- 
rated from  the  mother-country  than  if  they  remained  connect- 
ed with  her  and  with  each  other  by  a  federation.  It  has 
often  been  said  that,  instead  of  the  varying  relations  which 
now  exist  between  Britain  and  America,  we  should  have  seen 
a  perfect  friendship  had  we  but  permitted  the  American  col- 
onies to  go  their  way  in  peace ;  but  the  example  does  not 
hold  in  the  case  of  Australia,  which  is  by  no  means  wishful 
to  go  at  all. 


Colonies.  .  385 

Under  separation  we  should,  perhaps,  find  the  colonies 
better  emigration-fields  for  our  surplus  jiopulation  than  they 
are  at  present.  Many  of  onr  emigrants  who  flock  to  the 
United  States  are  attracted  by  the  idea  that  they  are  going 
to  become  citizens  of  a  new  nation  instead  of  dependents 
upon  an  old  one.  On  the  separation  of  Australia  from  En- 
gland we  might  expect  that  a  portion  of  these  sentimental- 
ists would  be  diverted  from  a  colony  necessarily  jealous  of  us 
so  long  as  we  hold  Canada,  to  one  which  from  accordance  of 
interests  is  likely  to  continue  friendly  or  allied.  This  argu- 
ment, however,  would  have  no  weight  with  those  who  desire 
the  independence  of  Canada,  and  who  look  upon  America  as 
still  our  colony. 

Separation,  we  may  then  conclude,  though  infinitely  bet- 
ter than  a  continuance  of  the  existing  one-sided  tie,  would  in 
a  healthier  state  of  our  relations,  not  be  to  the  interest  of 
Britain,  although  it  would  perhaps  be  morally  beneficial  to 
Australia.  Any  relation,  however,  would  be  preferable  to  the 
existing  one  of  mutual  indifference  and  distrust.  Recogniz- 
ing the  fact  that  Australia  has  come  of  age,  and  calling  on 
her,  too,  to  recognize  it,  we  should  say  to  the  Australian  col- 
onists, "  Our  present  system  can  not  continue ;  will  you 
amend  it,  or  separate  ?"  The  worst  thing  that  can  happen 
to  us  is  that  we  should  "  drift "  blindly  into  separation. 

After  all,  the  strongest  of  the  arguments  in  favor  of  sep- 
aration is  the  somewhat  paradoxical  one  that  would  bring 
us  a  step  nearer  to  the  virtual  confederation  of  the  English 
race. 

R 


PART    IV.— INDIA.* 


CHAPTER  I. 

MARITIME   CEYLON". 


We  failed  to  sight  the  Island  of  Cocoas,  a  territory  where 
John  Ross  is  king — a  worthy  Scotchman  who,  having  settled 
down  in  mid-ocean  some  hundreds  of  miles  from  any  port, 
proceeded  to  annex  himself  to  Java  and  the  Dutch.  On  be- 
ing remonstrated  with,  he  was  made  to  see  his  error ;  and, 
being  appointed  governor  of  and  consul  to  himself  and  labor- 
ers, now  hoists  the  union-jack,  while  his  island  has  a  red  line 
drawn  under  its  name  upon  the  map.  Two  days  after  quit- 
ting John  Ross's  latitude  we  crossed  the  line  in  the  heavy 
noonday  of  the  equatorial  belt  of  calms.  The  sun  itself  pass- 
ed the  equator  the  same  day ;  so,  after  having  left  Australia 
at  the  end  of  autumn,  I  suddenly  found  myself  in  Asia  in  the 
early  spring.  Mist  obscured  the  sides  except  at  dawn  and 
sunset,  when  there  was  a  clear  air,  in  which  floated  cirro- 
cumuli  with  flat  bases — clouds  cut  in  half,  as  it  seemed — 
and  avc  were  all  convinced  that  Homer  must  have  seen  the 

*  A  regular  and  uniform  system  of  spelling  of  native  names  and  other 
words  has  lately  been  brought  into  common  use  in  India,  and  adopted  by 
the  Government.  Not  without  hesitation  I  have  decided  upon  ignoring  this 
improvement,  and  confining  myself  to  spelling  known  to  and  used  by  the 
English  in  England,  for  whom  especially  I  am  writing. 

I  am  aware  that  there  is  no  system  in  the  spelling,  and  that  it  is  scien- 
tifically absurd ;  nevertheless  the  new  Government  spelling  is  not  yet  suffi- 
ciently well  understood  in  England  to  warrant  its  use  in  a  book  intended  for 
general  circulation.  The  scientific  spelling  is  not  always  an  improvement 
to  the  eye,  moreover :  Talookdars  of  Oude  may  not  be  right,  but  it  is  a  neat- 
er phrase  than  "  Taalulehdars  of  Awdh  ;"  and  it  will  probably  be  long  be- 
fore we  in  England  write  "kuli"  for  coolie,  or  adopt  the  spelling  "Tata 
hordes." 


Maritime  Ceylon.  667 

Indian  Ocean,  so  completely  did  the  sea  in  the  equatorial  belt 
realize  his  epithet  "  purple  "  or  "  wine-dark."  All  day  long 
the  flying  fish  —  "those  good  and  excellent  creatures  of 
God,"  as  Drake  styled  them — were  skimming  over  the  wa- 
ter on  every  side.  The  Elizabethan  captain,  who  knew 
their  delicacy  of  taste,  attributed  their  freedom  from  the 
usual  slime  of  fish  and  their  wholesome  nature  to  "  their 
continued  exercise  in  both  air  and  water."  The  heat  was 
great,  and  I  made  the  discovery  that  Australians  as  well  as 
Americans  can  put  their  feet  above  their  heads.  It  may  be 
asserted  that  the  height  above  the  deck  of  the  feet  of  pas- 
sengers on  board  ocean  steamers  varies  directly  as  the  heat, 
and  inversely  as  the  number  of  hours  before  dinner. 

In  the  afternoon  of  the  day  we  crossed  the  line  we  sight- 
ed a  large  East  Indiaman  lying  right  in  our  course,  and  so 
little  way  was  she  making  that,  on  coming  up  with  her,  we 
had  to  port  our  helm  in  order  not  to  run  her  down.  She 
hailed  us,  and  we  lay  to  while  she  sent  a  boat  aboard  us  with 
her  mail ;  for  although  she  was  already  a  month  out  from 
Calcutta  and  bound  for  London,  our  letters  would  reach  home 
before  she  was  around  the  Cape — a  singular  commentary 
upon  the  use  of  sailing-ships  in  the  Indian  seas.  Before  the 
boat  had  left  our  side  the  ships  had  floated  so  close  together 
through  attraction,  that  we  had  to  make  several  revolutions 
with  the  screw  in  order  to  prevent  collision. 

When  we,  who  were  all  sleeping  upon  deck,  were  aroused 
by  the  customary  growl  from  the  European  quartermaster 
of  "  Four  o'clock,  sir !  Going  to  swab  decks,  sir !  Get  up 
sir !"  given  with  the  flare  of  the  lantern  in  our  eyes,  we  were 
still  over  a  hundred  miles  from  Galle ;  but  before  the  sun 
had  risen  we  caught  sight  of  Adam's  Peak,  a  purple  mass 
iipon  the  northern  sky,  and  soon  we  were  racing  with  a  French 
steamer  from  Saigon,  and  with  a  number  of  white-sailed  na- 
tive craft  from  the  Maldives.  Within  a  few  hours  we  were 
at  anchor  in  a  small  bay  surrounded  with  lofty  cocoa-palms, 
in  which  were  lying,  tossed  by  a  rolling  swell,  some  dozen 
huge  steamers,  yard-arm  to  yard-arm — the  harbor  of  Point 
du  Galle.  Every  ship  was  flying  her  ensign,  and  in  the 
damp,  hot  air  the  old  tattered  union-jacks  seemed  brilliant 
crimson,  and  the  dull  green  of  the  coeoa-palms  became  a  daz* 


388  Greater  Britain. 

zling  emerald.  The  scene  wanted  but  the  bright  plumage 
of  the  Panama  macaws. 

Once  seated  in  the  piazza  of  the  Oriental  Company's  ho- 
tel, the  best  managed  in  the  East,  I  had  before  me  a  curious 
scene.  Along  the  streets  were  pouring  silent  crowds  of  tall 
and  graceful  girls,  as  we  at  the  first  glance  supposed,  wear- 
ing white  petticoats  and  bodices,  their  hair  carried  off  the 
face  with  a  decorated  hoop  and  caught  at  the  back  by  a  high 
tortoise-shell  comb.  As  they  drew  near  mustaches  began  to 
show,  and  I  saw  that  they  were  men,  while  walking  with 
them  were  women  naked  to  the  waist,  combless,  and  far  more 
rough  and  "  manly "  than  their  husbands.  Petticoat  and 
chignon  are  male  institutions  in  Ceylon,  and  time  after  time 
I  had  to  look  twice  before  I  could  fix  the  passer's  sex.  My 
rule  at  last  became  to  set  down  every  body  that  was  wom- 
anly as  a  man,  and  every  body  that  was  manly  as  a  woman. 
Cinghalese,  Kandians,  Tamils  from  South  India,  and  Moormen 
with  crimson  caftans  and  shaven  crowns,  formed  the  body  of 
the  great  crowd ;  but  besides  these  there  were  Portuguese, 
Chinese,  Jews,  Arabs,  Parsees,  Englishmen,  Malays,  Dutch- 
men, and  half-caste  burghers,  and  now  and  then  a  veiled  Ara- 
bian woman  or  a  Yeddah — one  of  the  aboriginal  inhabitants 
of  the  isle.  Ceylon  has  never  been  independent,  and  in  a 
singular  mixture  of  races  her  ports  bear  testimony  to  the  num- 
ber of  the  foreign  conquests. 

Two  American  missionaries  were  among  the  passers-b}7-, 
but  one  of  them,  detecting  strangers,  came  up  to  the  piazza 
in  search  of  news.  There  had  been  no  loss  of  national  char- 
acteristics in  these  men  ;  they  were  brimful  of  the  mixture 
of  earnestness  and  quaint  profanity  which  distinguishes  the 
New  England  Puritan  :  one  of  them  described  himself  to  me 
as  "just  a  kind  of  journeyman  soul-saver  like." 

The  Australian  strangers  were  not  long  left  unmolested 
by  more  serious  intruders  than  grave  Vermonters.  The  cry 
of  "  baksheesh  " — an  Arabian  word  that  goes  from  Gibraltar 
to  China,  and  from  Ceylon  to  the  Khyber  Pass,  and  which 
has  reached  us  in  the  form  of  "  boxes,"  in  our  phrase  Christ- 
mas-boxes— was  the  first  native  word  I  heard  in  the  East, 
at  Galle,  as  it  was  afterward  the  last,  at  Alexandria.  One  of 
the  beggars  was  an  Albino,  fair  as  a  child  in  a  Hampshire  lano 


Maritime  Ceylon.  3S9 

— one  of  those  strange  sports  of  nature  from  whom  Cinghalcse 
tradition  asserts  the  European  races  to  be  sprung. 

The  beggars  were  soon  driven  off  by  the  hotel  servants, 
and  better  licensed  plunderers  began  their  work.  "  Ah 
safeer,  ah  rupal,  ah  imral,  ah  mooney  stone,  ah  opal,  ah  amtit, 
ah !"  was  the  cry  from  every  quarter,  and  jewel-sellers  of  all 
the  nations  of  the  East  descended  on  us  in  a  swarm.  "  Me 
givee  you  written  guarantee  dis  real  stone ;"  "  Yes,  dat  real 
stone;  but  dis  good  stone — dat  no  good  stone — no  water. 
Ah,  see !"  "  Dat  no  good  stone.  Ah,  sahib,  you  tell  good 
stone  ;  all  dese  bad  stone,  reg'lar  England  stone.  You  go  by 
next  ship?  No?  Ah,  den  you  come  see  me  shop.  Dese 
ship-passenger  stone — humbuk  stone.  Ship  gone,  den  you 
come  me  shop  ;  see  good  stone.  When  you  come  ?  eh  ?  when 
you  come  ?"  "  Ah  safeer,  ah  catty-eye,  ah  pinkee  collal !" 
Meanwhile  every  Galle-d welling  European,  at  the  bar  of  the 
hotel,  was  adding  to  the  din  by  shouting  to  the  native  serv- 
ants, "  Boy,  turn  out  these  fellows,  and  stop  their  noise." 
This  cry  of  "  boy  "  is  a  relic  of  the  old  Dutch  times :  it  was 
the  Hollander's  term  for  his  slave,  and  hence  for  every  mem- 
ber of  the  inferior  race.  The  first  servant  that  I  heard  called 
"boy"  was  a  tottering,  white-haired  old  man. 

The  gems  of  Ceylon  have  long  been  famed.  One  thou- 
sand three  hundred  and  seventy  years  ago  the  Chinese  rec- 
ords tell  us  that  Ceylon,  then  tributary  to  the  empire,  sent 
presents  to  the  Brother  of  the  Moon,  one  of  the  gifts  being  a 
"  lapis-lazuli  spittoon."  It  is  probable  that  some  portion  of 
the  million  and  a  half  pounds  sterling  which  are  annually 
absoi-bed  in  this  small  island,  but  four-fifths  the  size  of  Ire- 
land, is  consumed  in  the  setting  of  the  precious  stones  for 
native  use ;  every  one  you  meet  wears  four  or  five  heavy 
silver  rings,  and  sovereigns  arc  melted  down  to  make  gold 
ornaments. 

Rushing  away  from  the  screaming  crowd  of  peddlers,  I 
went  with  some  of  my  Australian  friends  to  stroll  upon  the 
ramparts  and  enjoy  the  evening  salt  breeze.  TVe  met  sever- 
al bodies  of  white-faced  European,  sauntering  like  ourselves, 
and  dressed  like  us  in  white  trowsers  and  loose  white  jackets 
and  pith  hats.  What  we  looked  like  I  do  not  know,  but 
they  resembled  ships'  stewards.     At  last  it  struck  me  that 


390  Greater  Britain. 

they  were  soldiers,  and  upon  inquiring  I  found  that  these 
washed-out  dawdlers  represented  a  British  regiment  of  the 
line.  I  was  by  this  time  used  to  see  linesmen  out  of  scarlet, 
having  beheld  a  parade  inbnsh-ranger  beards  and  blue-serge 
"jumpers  "  at  Taranaki,  in  New  Zealand  ;  but  one  puts  up 
easier  with  the  soldier-bush-ranger  than  with  the  soldier- 
steward. 

The  climate  of  the  day  had  been  exquisite  with  its  bright 
air  and  cooling  breeze,  and  I  had  begun  to  think  that  those 
Avhoknew  Acapulco  and  Echuca  could  afford  to  laugh  at  the 
East  with  its  thermometer  at  88°.  The  reckoning  came  at 
night,  however,  for  by  dark  all  the  breeze  was  gone,  and  the 
thermometer,  instead  of  falling,  had  risen  to  90°  when  I  lay 
down  to  moan  and  wait  for  dawn.  As  I  Avas  dropping  oft" 
to  sleep  at  about  four  o'clock  a  native  came  round  and 
closed  the  doors  to  shut  out  the  dangerous  land-breeze  that 
springs  up  at  that  hour.  Again,  at  half-past  five,  it  was 
cooler,  and  I  had  began  to  doze,  when  a  cannon-shot,  fired 
apparently  under  my  bed,  brought  me  upon  my  feet  with 
something  more  than  a  start.  I  remembered  the  saying  of 
the  Western  boy  before  Petersburg  when  he  heard  for  the 
first  time  the  five  o'clock  camp-gun,  and  called  to  his  next 
neighbor  at  the  fire,  "  Say,  Bill,  did  you  hap  to  hear  how 
partie'lar  loud  the  day  broke  just  now?"  for  it  was  the 
morning-gun,  which  in  Ceylon  is  always  fired  at  the  same 
time,  there  being  less  than  an  hour's  difference  between  the 
longest  and  shortest  days.  Although  it  was  still  pitch  dark, 
the  bugles  began  to  sound  the  reveille  on  every  side — in  the 
infantry  lines,  the  artillery  barracks,  and  the  lines  of  the 
Malay  regiment,  the  well-known  Ceylon  Eifles.  Ten  min- 
utes afterward,  when  I  had  bathed  by  lamplight,  I  was  eat- 
ing plantains  and  taking  my  morning  tea  in  a  cool  room  lit 
by  the  beams  of  the  morning  sun,  so  short  is  the  April  twi- 
light in  Ceylon. 

It  is  useless  to  consult  the  thermometer  about  heat:  a 
European  can  labor  in  the  open  air  in  South  Australia  with 
the  thermometer  at  110°  in  the  shade,  while  with  a  thermom- 
eter at  88°  the  nights  are  unbearable  in  Ceylon.  To  dis- 
cover whether  the  climate  of  a  place  be  really  hot  examine 
its  newspapers ;  and  if  you  find  the  heat  recorded  you  may 


Maritime  Ceylon.  391 

make  up  your  mind  that  it  is  a  variable  climate,  but  if  no 
"  remarkable  heat "  or  similar  announcements  appear  then 
you  may  be  sure  that  you  arc  in  a  permanently  hot  place. 
It  stands  to  reason  that  no  one  in  the  tropics  ever  talks  of 
"  tropical  heat." 

In  so  equable  a  climate  the  apathy  of  the  Cinghalese  is 
not  surprising ;  but  they  are  not  merely  lazy,  they  are  a 
cowardly,  effeminate,  and  revengeful  race.  They  sleep  and 
smoke,  and  smoke  and  sleep,  rousing  themselves  only  once 
in  the  day  to  snatch  a  bowl  of  curry  and  rice  or  to  fleece  a 
white  man  ;  and  so  slowly  do  the  people  run  the  race  of  life 
that  even  elephantiasis,  common  here,  does  not  seem  to  put 
the  sufferer  far  behind  his  fellow-men.  Buddhism  is  no  mys- 
tery when  expounded  under  this  climate.  See  a  few  Cin- 
ghalese stretched  in  the  shade  of  a  cocoa-palm,  and  you  can 
conceive  Buddha  sitting  cross-legged  for  ten  thousand  years 
contemplating  his  own  perfection. 

The  second  morning  that  I  spent  in  Galle  the  captain  of 
the  Bombay  was  kind  enough  to  send  his  gig  for  me  to  the 
landing-steps  at  dawn,  and  his  Malay  crew  soon  rowed  me 
to  the  ship,  where  the  captain  joined  me,  and  we  pulled 
across  the  harbor  to  Watering-place  Point,  and  bathed  in 
the  shallow  sea,  out  of  the  reach  of  sharks.  When  we  had 
dressed  we  went  on  to  a  jetty  to  look  into  the  deep  water 
just  struck  by  the  rising  sun.  I  should  have  marvelled  at 
the  translucency  of  the  waters  had  not  the  awful  clearness 
with  which  the  bottom  of  the  Canadian  lakes  stand  revealed 
in  evening  light  been  fresh  within  my  memory,  but  here  the 
bottom  was  fairly  paved  with  corallines  of  inconceivable 
brilliancy  of  color,  and  tenanted  by  still  more  gorgeous  fish. 
Of  the  two  that  bore  the  palm  one  was  a  little  fish  of  maza- 
rine blue,  without  a  speck  of  any  other  color,  and  perfect 
too  in  shape ;  the  second,  a  silver  fish,  with  a  band  of  soft 
brown  velvet  round  its  neck  and  another  about  its  tail.  In 
a  still  more  sheltered  cove  the  fish  were  so  thick  that  dozens 
of  Moors  were  throwing  into  the  water,  with  the  arm-twist 
of  a  fly-fisher,  bare  hooks,  which  they  jerked  through  the 
shoal  and  into  the  air,  never  failing  to  bring  them  up  clothed 
with  a  fish,  caught  most  times  by  the  fin. 

In  the  evening  two  of  us  tried  a  native  dinner  at  a  house 


392  Greater  Britain. 

where  Cinghalese  gentlemen  dine  when  they  come  into  Galle 
on  business.  Our  fare  was  as  follows :  First  course  :  a  curry 
of  the  delicious  seir-fish,  a  sort  of  mackerel ;  a  prawn  curry  ; 
a  bread-fruit  and  cocoa-nut  curry ;  a  Brinjal  curry,  and  a  dish 
made  of  jack-fruit,  garlic,  and  mace ;  all  washed  down  by  iced 
water.  Second  course:  plantains,  and  very  old  arrack  in 
thimble-glasses,  followed  by  black  colfee.  Of  meat  there  was 
no  sign,  as  the  Cinghalese  rarely  touch  it ;  and,  although  we 
liked  our  vegetarian  dinner,  my  friend  passed  a  criticism  in 
action  on  it  by  dining  again  at  the  hotel-ordinary  one  hour 
later.  We  agreed,  too,  that  the  sickly  smell  of  cocoa-nut 
would  cleave  to  us  for  weeks. 

Starting  with  an  Australian  friend  at  the  dawn  of  my 
third  day  in  the  island  I  took  the  coach  by  the  coast-road  to 
Columbo.  We  drove  along  a  magnificent  road  in  an  avenue 
of  giant  cocoa-nut-palms,  with  the  sea  generally  within  easy 
sight,  and  with  a  native  hut  at  each  few  yards.  Every  two 
or  three  miles  the  road  crossed  a  lagoon  alive  with  bathers, 
and  near  the  bridge  was  generally  a.  village,  bazar,  and 
Buddhist  temple,  built  pagoda-shape  and  filled  with  worship- 
ers. The  road  was  thronged  with  gayly-dressed  Cinghalese ; 
and  now  and  again  we  would  pass  a  Buddhist  priest  in  saf- 
fron-colored robes  hastening  along,  his  umbrella  borne  over 
him  by  a  boy  clothed  from  top  to  toe  in  white.  The  umbrel- 
las oi  the  priests  are  of  yellow  silk,  and  shaped  like  ours,  but 
other  natives  carry  flat-topped  umbrellas,  gilt,  or  colored  red 
and  black.  The  Cinghalese  farmers  we  met  travelling  to 
their  temples  in  carts  drawn  by  tiny  bullocks.  Such  was  the 
brightness  of  the  air  that  the  people,  down  to  the  very  beg- 
gars, seemed  clad  in  holiday  attire. 

As  we  journeyed  on  we  began  to  find  more  variety  in  the 
scenery  and  vegetation,  and  were  charmed  with  the  scarlet- 
blossomed  cotton-tree,  and  with  the  areca,  or  betel-nut-palm. 
The  cocoa-nut  groves,  too,  were  carpeted  with  an  under- 
growth of  orchids  and  ipecacuanha,  and  here  and  there  was 
a  bread-fruit-tree  or  a  hibiscus. 

In  Ceylon  we  have  retained  the  Dutch  posting  system, 
and  small  light  coaches,  drawn  by  four  or  six  small  horses  at 
a  gallop,  run  over  excellent  roads,  carrying,  besides  the  pas- 
sengers, two  boys  behind,  who  shout  furiously  whenever  vc- 


Maritime  Ceylon.  893 

hides  oi'  passengers  obstruct  the  mails,  and  who  at  night 
carry  torches  high  in  the  air  to  light  the  road.  Thus  we 
dashed  through  the  bazars  and  cocoa-groves,  then  across  the 
golden  sands  covered  with  rare  shells,  and  fringed  on  the  one 
side  with  the  bright  blue  dancing  sea,  dotted  with  many  a 
white  sail,  and  on  the  other  side  with  deep  green  jungle,  in 
which  were  sheltered  dark  lagoons.  Once  in  a  while  we 
would  drive  out  on  to  a  plain,  varied  by  clumps  of  fig  and 
tulip  trees,  and  looking  to  the  east  would  sight  the  purple 
mountains  ot  the  central  range ;  then,  dashing  again  into  the 
thronged  bazars,  would  see  little  but  the  bright  palm-trees 
relieved  upon  an  azure  sky.  The  road  is  one  continuous  vil- 
lage, for  the  population  is  twelve  times  as  dense  in  the  west- 
ern as  in  the  eastern  provin~.es  of  Ceylon.  No  wonder  that 
ten  thousand  natives  have  died  of  cholera  within  the  last  few 
months  !  All  this  dense  coast  population  is  supported  by  the 
cocoa-nut,  for  there  are  in  Ceylon  200,000  acres  under  cocoa- 
palms,  which  yield  from  seven  to  eight  hundred  million  co- 
coa-nuts a  year,  and  are  worth  two  millions  sterling. 

Near  Bentotte,  where  we  had  lunched  off  horrible  oysters 
of  the  pearl-yielding  kind,  we  crossed  the  Kaluganga  River, 
densely  fringed  with  mangrove,  and  in  its  waters  saw  a  py- 
thon swiming  bravely  toward  the  shore.  Snakes  are  not  so 
formidable  as  land-leeches,  the  Cinghalese  and  planters  say, 
and  no  one  hears  of  many  persons  being  bitten,  though  a 
great  reward  for  an  antidote  to  the  cobra  bite  has  lately  been 
offered  by  the  Rajah  of  Travancore. 

As  we  entered  what  the  early  maps  style  "  The  Christian 
Kyngdom  of  Columbo,"  though  where  they  found  their 
Christians  no  one  knows,  our  road  lay  through  the  cinnamon 
gardens,  which  are  going  out  of  cultivation,  as  they  no  longer 
pay,  although  the  cinnamon  laurel  is  a  spice-grove  in  itself, 
giving  cinnamon  from  its  bark,  camphor  from  the  roots,  clove- 
oil  from  its  leaves.  The  plant  grows  wild  about  the  island, 
and  is  cut  and  peeled  by  the  natives  at  no  cost  save  that  of 
children's  labor,  which  they  do  not  count  as  cost  at  all.  -The 
scene  in  the  gardens  that  still  remain  was  charming :  the  cin- 
namon-laurel bushes  contrasted  well  with  the  red  soil,  and 
the  air  was  alive  with  dragon-flies,  moths,  and  winged  beetles, 
while  the  softness  of  the  evening  breeze  had  tempted  out  the 


394  Greater  Britain. 

half-caste  Dutch  "  burgher  "  families  of  the  city,  who  were 
driving  and  walking  clothed  in  white,  the  ladies  with  their 
jet  hair  dressed  with  natural  flowers.  The  setting  sun  threw 
brightness  without  heat  into  the  gay  scene. 

A  friend  who  had  horses  ready  for  us  at  the  hotel  where 
the  mail-coach  stopped  said  that  it  was  not  too  late  for  a 
ride  through  the  fort  or  European  town  inside  the  walls ;  so 
cantering  along  the  esplanade,  Avhere  the  officers  of  the  gar- 
rison were  enjoying  their  evening  ride,  we  crossed  the  moat, 
and  found  ourselves  in  what  is  perhaps  the  most  graceful 
street  in  the  world :  a  double  range  of  long  low  houses  of 
bright  white  stone,  with  deep  piazzas,  buried  in  masses  of 
bright  fo%age,  in  which  the  fire-flies  were  beginning  to  play. 
In  the  centre  of  the  fort  is  an  Italian  campanile,  which  serves 
at  once  as  a  belfry,  a  clock-tower,  and  a  light-house.  In  the 
morning  before  sunrise  Ave  climbed  this  tower  for  the  view. 
The  central  range  stood  up  sharply  on  the  eastern  sky  as  the 
sun  was  still  hid  behind  it,  and  to  the  south-east  there  tow- 
ered high  the  peak  where  Adam  mourned  his  son  a  hundred 
years.  In  color,  shape,  and  height  the  Cinghalese  Alps  re- 
semble the  Central  Apennines,  and  the  view  from  Columbo 
is  singularly  like  that  from  Pesaro  on  the  Adriatic.  As  we 
looked  landward  from  the  campanile  the  native  town  was 
mirrored  in  the  lake,  and  outside  the  city  the  white-coated 
troops  were  marching  by  companies  on  to  the  parade-ground, 
whence  we  could  faintly  hear  the  distant  bands. 

Driving  back  in  a  carriage  shaped  like  a  street  cab,  but 
with  fixed  Venetians  instead  of  sides  and  windows,  we  visit- 
ed the  curing  establishment  of  the  Ceylon  Coffee  Company, 
where  the  coffee  from  the  hills  is  dried  and  sorted.  Thou- 
sands of  native  girls  are  employed  in  coffee-picking  at  the 
various  stores,  but  it  is  doubted  whether  the  whole  of  this  la- 
bor is  not  wasted,  the  berries  being  sorted  according  to  their 
shape  and  size — characteristics  which  seem  in  no  way  to  af- 
fect the  flavor.  The  Ceylon  exporters  say  that  if  we  choose 
to  pay  twice  as  much  for  shapely  as  for  ill-shaped  berries,  it- 
is  no  business  of  theirs  to  refuse  to  humor  us  by  sorting. 

The  most  remarkable  institution  in  Columbo  is  the  steam 
factory  where  the  Government  make  or  mend  such  machin- 
ery as  their  experts  certify  can  not  be  dealt  with  at  any  pri- 


Maritime  Ceylon.  395 

vate  works  existing  in  the  island.  The  Government  ele- 
phants are  kept  at  the  same  place,  but  I  found  them  at  -work 
up  country  on  the  Kandy  road. 

In  passing  through  the  native  town  upon  Slave  Island  wc 
saw  some  French  Catholic  priests  in  their  working  jungle 
dresses  of  blue  serge.  They  have  met  with  singular  success- 
es in  Ceylon,  having  made  150,000  converts,  while  the  En- 
glish and  American  missions  have  between  them  only  30,000 
natives.  The  Protestant  missionaries  in  Ceylon  complain 
much  of  the  planters,  whom  they  accuse  of  declaring  when 
they  wish  to  hire  men  that  "no  Christian  need  apply;"  but 
it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  neither  Protestants  nor  Catholics 
can  make  converts  among  the  self-supported  "  Moormen,"  the 
active,  pushing  inhabitants  of  the  ports,  who  are  Mohammed- 
ans to  a  man.  The  chief  cause  of  the  success  of  the  Catho- 
lics among  the  Cinghalese  seems  to  be  the  remarkable  earn- 
estness ol  the  French  and  Italian  missionary  priests.  Our 
English  missionaries  in  the  East  are  too  often  men  incapable 
of  bearing  fatigue  or  climate  ;  ignorant  of  every  trade,  and 
inferior  even  in  teaching  and  preaching  powers  to  their  ri- 
vals. It  is  no  <easy  matter  to  spread  Christianity  among 
the  Cinghalese,  the  inventors  of  Buddhism,  the  most  ancient 
and  most  widely-spread  of  all  the  religions  of  the  world.  Ev- 
cry  Buddhist  firmly  believes  in  the  potential  perfection  of 
man,  and  is  incapable  of  understanding  the  ideas  of  original 
sin  and  redemption  ;  and  a  Cinghalese  Buddhist — passionless 
himself- — can  not  comprehend  the  passionate  worship  that 
Christianity  requires.  The  Catholics,  however,  do  not  neg- 
lect the  Eastern  field  for  missionary  labor.  Four  of  their 
bishops  from  Cochin  China  and  Japan  were  met  by  me  in 
Galle  upon  their  way  to  Rome. 

Our  drive  was  brought  to  an  end  by  a  visit  to  the  old 
Dutch  quarter — a  careful  imitation  of  Amsterdam  ;  indeed, 
one  of  its  roads  still  bears  the  portentous  Batavian  name  of 
Dam  Street.  Their  straight  canals  and  formal  lines  of  trees 
the  Hollanders  have  carried  with  them  throughout  the  world  ; 
but  in  Columbo,  not  content  with  manufacturing  imitation 
canals,  that  began  and  ended  in  a  wall,  they  dug  great  arti- 
ficial lakes  to  recall  their  well-loved  Hague. 

The  same  evening  I  set  off  by  the  new  railway  for  Kandy 


396  Greater  Britain. 

and  Nuwara  Ellia  (pronounced  Nooralia),in  the  hills.  Hav- 
ing no  experience  of  the  climate  of  mountain  regions  in  the 
tropics,  I  expected  a  merely  pleasant  change,  and  left  Colum- 
bo  wearing  my  white  kit,  which  served  me  well  enough  as 
far  as  Ambe  Pusse — the  railway  terminus,  which  we  reached 
at  ten  o'clock  at  night.  We  started  at  once  by  coach,  and 
had  not  driven  far  up  the  hills  in  the  stili  moonlight  before 
the  cold  became  extreme,  and  I  was  saved  from  a  severe  chill 
only  by  the  kindness  of  the  coffee-planter  who  shared  the 
back  seat  with  me,  and  who,  being  well  clad  in  woolen,  lent 
me  his  great-coat.  After  this  incident  we  chatted  pleasantly 
without  fear  of  interruption  from  our  sole  companion — a  na- 
tive girl,  who  sat  silently  chewing  betel  all  the  way — and 
reached  Kandy  before  dawn.  Telling  the  hotel  servants  to 
wake  me  in  an  hour,  I  wrapped  myself  in  a  blanket — the  first 
I  had  seen  since  I  left  Australia — and  enjoyed  a  refreshing 
sleep. 


CHAPTER  n. 

KANDY. 

The  early  morning  was  foggy  and  cold  as  an  October 
dawn  in  an  English  forest ;  but  before  I  had  been  long  in  the 
gardens  of  the  Government-house  the  sun  rose,  and  the  heat 
returned  once  more.  After  wandering  among  the  petunias 
and  fan-palms  of  the  gardens  I  passed  on  into  the  city,  the 
former  capital  of  the  Kandian  or  highland  kingdom,  and  one 
of  the  holiest  of  Buddhist  towns.  The  kingdom  was  nev- 
er conquered  by  the  Portuguese  or  Dutch  while  the}''  held 
the  coasts,  and  was  not  overrun  by  us  till  1815,  while  it  has 
several  times  been  in  rebellion  since  that  date.  The  people 
still  retain  their  native  customs  in  a  high  degree :  for  instance, 
the  Kandian  husband  does  not  take  his  wife's  inheritance  un- 
less he  lives  with  her  on  her  father's  land :  if  she  lives  with 
him,  she  forfeits  her  inheritance.  Kandian  law,  indeed,  is  ex- 
pressly  maintained  by  \is  except  in  the  matters  of  polygamy 
ami  polyandry,  although  the  maritime  Cinghalese  are  gov- 
erned, as  are  the  English  in  Ceylon  and  at  the  Cape,  by  the 
civil  code  of  Holland. 


Kandy.  397 

The  difference  between  theKandian  and  coast  Cinghalese 
is  very  great.  At  Kandy  I  found  the  men  wearing  flowing 
crimson  robes  and  flat-topped  caps,  while  their  faces  were 
lighter  in  color  than  those  of  the  coast  people,  and  many  of 
them  had  beards.  The  women  also  wore  the  nose-ring  in  a 
different  way,  and  were  clothed  above  as  well  as  below  the 
•waist.  It  is  possible  that  some  day  we  may  unfortunately 
hear  more  of  this  energetic  and  warlike  people. 

The  city  is  one  that  dwells  long  in  the  mind.  The  Up- 
per Town  is  one  great  garden,  so  numerous  are  the  sacred 
groves,  vocal  with  the  song  of  the  Eastern  orioles  ;  but  here 
and  there  are  dotted  about  pagoda-shaped  temples,  identical 
in  form  with  those  of  Tartary  two  thousand  miles  away,  and 
from  these  there  proceeds  a  roar  of  tomtoms  that  almost 
drowns  the  song.  One  of  these  temples  contains  the  holiest 
of  Buddhist  relics,  the  tooth  of  Buddha,  which  is  yearly  car- 
ried in  a  grand  procession.  When  we  first  annexed  the  Kan- 
dian  kingdom  we  recognized  the  Buddhist  Church,  made  our 
officers  take  part  in  the  procession  of  the  Sacred  Tooth,  and 
sent  a  State  offering  to  the  shrine.  Times  are  changed  since 
then,  but  the  Buddhist  priests  are  still  exempt  from  certain 
taxes.  All  round  the  sacred  inclosures  are  ornamented  walls 
■with  holy  sculptured  figures ;  and  in  the  Lower  Town  are 
fresh-water  lakes  and  tanks,  formed  by  damming  the  Mava- 
liganga  River,  and  also,  in  some  measure,  holy.  An  atmos- 
phere of  Buddhism  pervades  all  Kandy. 

From  Kandy  I  visited  the  coffee-district  of  which  it  is  the 
capital  and  centre,  but  I  was  much  disappointed  with  regard 
to  the  amount  of  land  that  is  still  open  to  coffee-cultivation. 
At  the  Government  Botanic  Garden  at  Peredenia  (where  the 
jalap  plant,  the  castor-oil  plant,  and  the  ipecacuanha  were 
growing  side  by  side),  I  was  told  that  the  shrub  does  not 
flourish  under  1500  nor  over  3000  or  4000  feet  above  sea- 
level,  and  that  all  the  best  coffee-land  is  already  planted. 
Coffee-growing  has  already  done  so  much  for  Ceylon  that  it 
is  to  be  hoped  that  it  has  not  reached  its  limit :  in  thirty- 
three  years  it  has  doubled  her  trade  ten  times,  and  to  En- 
gland alone  she  now  sends  two  millions'  worth  of  coffee  every 
year.  The  central  district  of  the  island,  in  which  lie  the 
hills  and  coffee-country,  is,  with  the  exception  of  the  towns, 


398  Greater  Britain. 

politically  not  a  portion  of  Ceylon :  there  are  English  capital, 
English  management,  and  Indian  labor,  and  the  cocoa-palm 
is  unknown ;  Tamil  laborers  are  exclusively  employed  upon 
the  plantations,  although  the  carrying-trade,  involving  but 
little  labor,  is  in  the  hands  of  the  Cinghalese.  No  such  of- 
ficial discouragement  is  shown  to  the  European  planters  in 
Ceylon  as  that  which  they  experience  in  India ;  and  were 
there  but  more  good  coffee-lands  and  more  capital  all  would 
be  well.  The  planters  say  that,  after  two  years'  heavy  ex- 
penditure and  dead  loss,  20  per  cent,  can  be  made  by  men 
who  take  in  sufficient  capital,  but  that  no  one  ever  does  take 
capital  enough  for  the  land  he  buys,  and  that  they  all  have 
to  borrow  from  one  of  the  Columbo  companies  at  1 2  per  cent., 
and  are  then  bound  to  ship  their  coffee  through  that  compa- 
ny alone.  It  is  regarded  as  an  open  question  by  many  disin- 
terested friends  of  Ceylon  whether  it  might  not  be  wise  for 
the  local  Government  to  advance  money  to  the  planters ;  but 
besides  the  fear  of  jobbery,  there  is  the  objection  to  this 
course  that  the  Government,  becoming  interested  in  the  suc- 
cess of  coffee-planting,  might  also  come  to  connive  at  the  op- 
pression of  the  native  laborers.  This  oppression  of  the  peo- 
ple lies  at  the  bottom  of  that  Dutch  system  which  is  often 
held  up  for  our  imitation  in  Ceylon. 

Those  who  narrate  to  us  the  effects  of  the  Java  system 
forget  that  it  is  not  denied  that  in  the  tropical  islands,  with 
an  idle  population  and  a  rich  soil,  compulsory  labor  may  be 
the  only  way  of  developing  the  resources  of  the  countries, 
but  they  fail  to  show  the  justification  for  our  developing  the 
resources  of  the  country  by  such  means.  The  Dutch  culture- 
system  puts  a  planter  down  upon  the  Crown  lands,  and,  hav- 
ing made  advances  to  him,  leaves  it  to  him  to  find  out  how 
he  shall  repay  the  Government.  Forced  labor — under  what- 
ever name — is  the  natural  result. 

The  Dutch,  moreover,  bribe  the  great  native  chiefs  by 
princely  salaries  and  vast  percentage  upon  the  crops  their 
people  raise,  and  force  the  native  agriculturists  to  grow  spices 
for  the  Royal  Market  of  Amsterdam.  Of  the  purchase  of 
these  spices  the  Government  has  a  monopoly :  it  buys  them 
at  what  price  it  will,  and,  selling  again  in  Europe  to  the 
world,  clears  annually  some  £4,000,000  sterling  by  the  job. 


Kandy. 

That  plunder,  slavery,  and  famine  often  follow  the  extension 
of  their  system  is  nothing  to  the  Dutch.  Strict  press  laws 
prevent  the  Dutch  at  home  from  hearing  any  thing  of  the 
discontent  in  Java  except  when  famine  or  insurrection  call 
attention  to  the  isle ;  and  £4,000,000  a  year  profit,  and  half 
the  expenses  of  their  navy  paid  for  them  by  one  island  in 
the  Eastern  seas,  make  up  for  many  deaths  of  brown-faced 
people  by  starvation. 

The  Dutch  often  deny  that  the  Government  retains  the 
monopoly  of  export ;  but  the  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  the 
Dutch  Trading  Company,  who  have  the  monopoly  of  the  ex- 
ports of  the  produce  of  Crown  lands — which  amount  to  two- 
thirds  of  the  total  exports  of  the  isle — are  mere  agents  of 
the  Government. 

It  is  hard  to  say  that,  apart  from  the  nature  of  the  cul- 
ture-system, the  Dutch  principle  of  making  a  profit  out  of 
the  countries  which  they  rule  is  inconsistent  with  the  posi- 
tion of  a  Christian  nation.  It  is  the  ancient  system  of  coun- 
tries having  possessions  in  the  East,  and  upon  our  side  we 
are  not  able  to  show  any  definite  reasons  in  favor  of  our 
course  of  scrupulously  keeping  separate  the  Indian  revenue, 
and  spending  Indian  profits  upon  India  and  Cinghalese  in 
Ceylon,  except  such  reasons  as  would  logically  lead  to  our 
quitting  India  altogether.  That  the  Dutch  should  make  a 
profit  out  of  Java  is  perhaps  not  more  immoral  than  that 
they  should  be  there.  At  the  same  time  the  character  of  the 
Dutch  system  lowers  the  tone  of  the  whole  Dutch  nation, 
and  especially  of  those  who  have  any  connection  with  the 
Indies,  and  effectually  prevents  future  amendment.  With 
our  system  there  is  some  chance  of  right  being  done,  so  small 
is  our  self-interest  in  the  wrong.  From  the  fact  that  no  sur- 
plus is  sent  home  from  Ceylon,  she  is  at  least  free  from  that 
bane  of  Java — the  desire  of  the  local  authorities  to  increase 
as  much  as  possible  the  valuable  productions  of  their  dis- 
tricts, even  at  the  risk  of  famine,  provided  only  that  they  may 
hope  to  put  off  the  famine  until  after  their  time — a  desire 
that  produces  the  result  that  subaltern  Dutch  officers  Avho  ob- 
serve in  their  integrity  the  admirable  rules  which  have  been 
made  for  the  protection  of  the  native  population  are  heartily 
abused  for  their  ridiculous  scrupulosity,  as  it  is  styled. 


400  Gkeateb  Britain. 

Not  to  be  carried  away  by  the  material  success  of  the 
Dutch  system,  it  is  as  well  to  bear  in  mind  its  secret  history. 
A  private  company — the  Dutch  Trading  Society — was  found- 
ed at  Amsterdam  in  1824,  the  then  king  being  the  largest 
shareholder.  The  company  was  in  difficulties  in  1830,  when 
the  king,  finding  he  was  losing  money  fast,  sent  out  as  Gov- 
ernor-general of  the  Dutch  East  Indies  his  personal  friend 
Van  den  Bosch.  The  next  year  the  culture-system,  with  all 
its  attendant  horrors,  was  introduced  into  Java  by  Van  den 
Bosch,  the  Dutch  Trading  Society  being  made  agents  for  the 
Government.  The  result  was  the  extraordinary  prosperity 
of  the  company,  and  the  leaving  by  the  merchant-king  of  a 
private  fortune  of  fabulous  amount. 

The  Dutch  system  has  been  defended  by  every  conceiva- 
ble kind  of  blind  misrepresentation  ;  it  has  even  been  declared, 
by  writers  who  ought  certainly  to  know  better,  that  the  four 
millions  of  surplus  that  Holland  draws  from  Java,  being 
profits  on  trade,  .are  not  taxation  !  Even  the  blindest  ad- 
mirers of  the  system  are  forced,  however,  to  admit  that  it 
involves  the  absolute  prohibition  of  missionary  enterprise 
and  total  exclusion  from  knowledge  of  the  Java  people. 

The  Ceylon  planters  have  at  present  political  as  well  as 
financial  difficulties  on  their  hands.  They  have  petitioned 
the  queen  for  "  self-government  for  Ceylon,"  and  for  control 
of  the  revenue  by  "representatives  of  the  public" — excellent 
principles,  if  "  public  "  meant  public,  and  "  Ceylon,"  Ceylon ; 
but  when  we  inquire  of  the  planters  what  they  really  mean 
we  find  that  by  "Ceylon"  they  understand  Galle  and  Co- 
lumbo  Fort,  and  by  "  the  public "  they  mean  themselves. 
There  are  at  present  six  unofficial  members  of  the  Council : 
of  these  the  whites  have  three  members,  the  Dutch  burghers 
one,  and  the  natives  two  ;  and  the  planters  expect  the  same 
proportions  to  be  kept  in  a  Council  to  which  supreme  power 
shall  be  intrusted  in  the  disposition  of  the  revenues.  They 
are,  indeed,  careful  to  explain  that  they  in  no  way  desire  the 
extension  of  representative  institutions  to  Ceylon. 

The  first  thing  that  strikes  the  English  traveller  in  Ceylon 
is  the  apparent  slightness  of  our  hold  upon  the  country.  In 
my  journey  from  Galle  to  Columbo,  by  early  morning  and 
midday,  I  met   no  white  man ;    from  Columbo  to  Kandy  1 


Kandy.  401 

travelled  with  one,  but  met  none ;  at  Kandy  I  saw  no  whites ; 
at  Nuwara  Ellia,  not  half  a  dozen.  On  my  return,  I  saw  no 
whites  between  Nuwara  Ellia  and  Ambe  Pusse,  where  there 
was  a  white  man  in  the  railway-station;  and  on  my  return 
by  evening  from  Columbo  to  Galle,  in  all  the  thronging 
crowds  along  the  roads  there  was  not  a  single  European. 
There  are  hundreds  of  Cinghalese  in  the  interior  who  live 
and  die  and  never  see  a  white  man.  Out  of  the  two  and  a 
quarter  millions  of  people  who  dwell  in  what  the  planters 
call  the  "  colony  of  Ceylon  "  there  are  but  3000  Europeans, 
of  whom  1500  are  our  soldiers,  and  250  our  civilians.  Of  the 
European  non-official  class  there  are  but  1300  persons,  or 
about  500  grown-up  men.  The  proposition  of  the  Planter's 
Association  is  that  we  should  confide  the  despotic  govern- 
ment over  two  and  a  quarter  millions  ot  Buddhist,  Moham- 
medan, and  Hindoo  laborers  to  these  500  English  Christian 
employers.  It  is  not  the  Ceylon  planters  who  have  a  griev- 
ance against  us,  but  we  Avho  have  a  serious  complaint  against 
them ;  so  flourishing  a  dependency  should  certainly  provide 
for  all  the  costs  of  her  defense. 

Some  of  the  mountain  views  between  Kandy  and  Nuwara 
Ellia  are  full  of  grandeur,  though  they  lack  the  New  Zealand 
snows ;  but  none  can  match,  for  variety  and  color,  that  which 
I  saw  on  my  return  from  the  ascent  to  the  Kaduganava 
Pass,  where  you  look  over  a  foreground  of  giant-leaved  tali- 
pot and  slender  areca  palms  and  tall  bamboos,  lit  with  the 
scarlet  blooms  of  the  cotton-tree,  on  to  a  plain  dotted  with 
banyan-tree  groves  and  broken  by  wooded  hills.  On  either 
side  the  deep  valley-bottoms  are  carpeted  with  bright  green 
— the  wet  rice-lands  or  terraced  paddy-fields  from  which  the 
natives  gather  crop  after  crop  throughout  the  year. 

In  the  union  of  rich  foliage  with  deep  color  and  grand 
forms  no  scenery  save  that  of  New  Zealand  can  bear  com- 
parison with  that  of  the  hill  country  of  Ceylon,  unless,  in- 
deed, it  be  the  scenery  of  Java  and  the  far  Eastern  isles. 


402  Greater  Britain. 


CHAPTER  III. 

MADRAS   TO    CALCUTTA. 

Spending  but  a  single  day  in  Madras — an  inferior  Colum- 
bo — I  passed  on  to  Calctitta  with  a  pleasant  remembrance 
of  the  air  of  prosperity  that  hangs  about  the  chief  city  of 
what  is  still  called  by  Bengal  civilians  "  The  Benighted  Pres- 
idency." Small  as  are  the  houses,  poor  as  are  the  shops,  every 
one  looks  well-to-do  and  every  body  happy,  from  the  not  un- 
deservedly famed  cooks  at  the  club  to  the  catamaran  men  on 
the  shore.  Cofiee  and  good  government  have  of  late  done 
much  for  Madras. 

The  surf  consists  of  two  lines  of  rollers,  and  is  altogether 
inferior  to  the  fine-weather  swell  on  the  west  coast  of  New 
Zealand,  and  only  to  be  dignified  and  promoted  into  surfship 
by  men  of  that  fine  imagination  which  will  lead  them  to  sniff 
the  spices  a  day  before  they  reach  Ceylon,  or  the  pork  and 
molasses  when  off  Nantucket  light-ship.  The  row  through 
the  first  roller  in  the  lumbering  Massullah  boat,  manned  by 
a  dozen  sinewy  blacks,  the  waiting  for  a  chance  betAveen  the 
first  and  second  lines  of  spray,  and  then  the  dash  for  shore, 
the  crew  singing  their  measured  "Ah !  lah  !  lalala ! — ah !  lah  ! 
lalala !"  the  stroke  coming  writh  the  accented  syllable,  and 
the  helmsman  shrieking  with  excitement,  is  a  more  preten- 
tious ceremony  than  that  which  accompanies  the  crossing  of 
Hokitika  bar,  but  the  passage  is  a  far  less  dangerous  one. 
The  Massullah  boats  are  like  empty  hay-barges  on  the 
Thames,  but  built  without  nails,  so  that  they  "  give  "  instead 
of  breaking  up  when  battered  by  the  sand  on  one  side  and 
the  seas  upon  the  other.  This  is  a  very  wise  precaution  in 
the  case  of  boats  which  are  always  made  to  take  the  shore 
broadside  on.  The  first  sea  that  strikes  the  boat  either  shoots 
the  passenger  on  to  the  dry  sand  or  puts  him  where  he  can 
easily  de  caught  by  the  natives  on  the  beach,  but  the  Massul- 
lah boat  herself  gets  a  terrible  banging  before  the  crew  can 
haul  her  out  of  reach  of  the  seas. 


Madras  to  Calcutta.  403 

Sighting  the  Temple  of  Juggernauth  and  one  palm-tree, 
but  seeing  no  land,  we  entered  the  lloogly,  steaming  be- 
tween light-houses,  guard-ships,  and  buoys,  but  not  catching 
a  glimpse  of  the  low  land  of  the  Sunderabunds  till  we  had 
been  many  hours  in  "  the  river."  After  lying  right  oft*  the 
tiger-infested  Island  of  Saugur,  we  started  on  our  run  up  to 
Calcutta  before  the  sun  was  risen.  Compared  with  Ceylon 
the  scene  was  English ;  there  was  nothing  tropical  about  it 
except  the  mist  upon  the  land ;  and  low  villas,  and  distant 
factory  chimneys  reminded  one  of  the  Thames  between  Rat- 
tersea  and  Fulham.  Coming  into  Garden  Reach,  where  large 
ships  anchor  before  they  sail,  we  had  a  long,  low  building 
on  our  right,  gaudy  and  architecturally  hideous,  but  from 
its  vast  size  almost  imposing :  it  was  the  palace  of  the  de- 
throned King  of  Oude,  the  place  where,  it  is  said,  are  carried 
on  deeds  become  impossible  in  Lucknow.  Such  has  been  the 
extravagance  of  the  king  that  the  Government  of  India  has 
lately  interfered,  and  appointed  a  commission  to  pay  his 
debts,  and  deduct  them  from  his  income  of  £120,000  a  year; 
for  we  pay  into  the  privy  purse  of  the  dethroned  Vizier  of 
Oude  exactly  twice  the  yearly  sum  that  we  set  aside  for  that 
of  Queen  Victoria.  Whatever  income  is  allowed  to  native 
princes  they  always  spend  the  double.  The  experience  of 
the  Dutch  in  Java  and  our  own  in  India  is  uniform  in  this 
respect.  Removed  from  that  slight  restraint  upon  expendi- 
ture which  the  fear  of  bankruptcy  or  revolution  forces  upon 
reigning  kings,  native  princes  supported  by  European  Gov- 
ernments run  recklessly  into  debt.  The  commission  which 
was  sitting  upon  the  debts  of  the  King  of  Oude  while  I  was 
in  Calcutta  warned  him  that,  if  he  offended  a  second  time, 
Government  would  for  the  future  spend  his  income  for  him. 
It  is  not  the  king's  extravagance  alone,  however,  that  is 
complained  of.  Always  notorious  for  debauchery,  he  has 
now  become  infamous  for  his  vices.  One  of  his  wives  was  ar- 
rested  while  I  was  in  Calcutta  for  purchasing  girls  for  the  ha- 
rem, but  the  king  himself  escaped.  For  nine  years  he  has  nev- 
er left  his  palace,  yet  he  spends,  we  are  told,  from  £200,000 
to  £250,000  a  year. 

In  his  extravagance  and  immorality  the  King  of  Oude 
does  not  stand  alone  in  Calcutta.     His  mode  of  life  is  imi- 


404  Greater  Britain. 

tated  by  the  wealthy  natives ;  his  vices  are  mimicked  by 
every  young  Bengalee  baboo.  It  is  a  question  whether  we 
are  not  responsible  for  the  tone  which  has  been  taken  by 
"civilization"  in  Calcutta.  The  old  philosophy  has  gone, 
and  left  nothing  in  its  place ;  we  have  by  moral  force  de- 
stroyed the  old  religions  in  Calcutta,  but  we  have  set  up  no 
new.  Whether  the  character  of  our  Indian  Government,  at 
once  levelling  and  paternal,  has  not  much  to  do  with  the 
spread  of  careless  sensuality  is  a  question  before  answering 
which  it  would  be  well  to  look  to  France,  where  a  similar 
government  has  for  sixteen  years  prevailed.  In  Paris,  at 
least,  democratic  despotism  is  fast  degrading  the  French  cit- 
izen to  the  moral  level  of  the  Bengalee  beboo. 

The  first  thing  in  Calcutta  that  I  saw  was  the  view  of  the 
Government-house  from  the  Park  Reserve — a  miniature  Sa- 
hara since  its  trees  were  destroyed  by  the  great  cyclone. 
The  viceroy's  dwelling,  though  crushed  by  groups  of  lions 
and  unicorns  of  gigantic  stature  and  astonishing  design,  is  an 
imposing  building ;  but  it  is  the  only  palace  in  the  "  city  of 
palaces  " — a  name  which  must  have  been  given  to  the  pestif- 
erous city  by  some  one  who  had  never  seen  any  other  towns 
but  Liverpool  and  London.  The  true  city  of  palaces  is 
Lucknow. 

In  Calcutta  I  first  became  acquainted  with  that  unbound- 
ed hospitality  of  the  great  mercantile  houses  in  the  East  of 
which  I  have  since  acquired  many  pleasing  remembrances. 
The  luxury  of  "  the  firm "  impresses  the  English  traveller ; 
the  huge  house  is  kept  as  a  hotel ;  every  one  is  welcome  to 
dinner,  breakfast,  and  bed  in  the  veranda,  or  in  a  room  if  he 
can  sleep  under  a  roof  in  the  hot  weather.  Sometimes  two 
and  sometimes  twenty  sit  down  to  the  meals,  and  always 
without  notice  to  the  butlers  or  the  cooks,  but  every  one  is 
welcome,  down  to  the  friend  of  a  friend's  friend  ;  and  junior 
clerks  will  write  letters  of  introduction  to  members  of  the 
firm,  which  secure  the  bearer  a  most  hospitable  welcome  from 
the  other  clerks,  even  when  all  the  partners  are  away.  "  If 
Brown  is  not  there,  Smith  will  be,  and  if  he's  away,  why 
then  Johnson  will  put  you  up,"  is  the  form  of  invitation  to 
the  hospitalities  of  an  Eastern  firm.  The  finest  of  fruits  are 
on  table  between  five  and  six,  and  tea  and  iced  drinks  are 


Madras  to  Calcutta.  405 

ready  at  all  times  from  dawn  to  breakfast — a  ceremony  which 
takes  place  at  ten.  To  the  regular  meals  you  come  in  or 
not  as  you  please,  and  no  one  trained  in  Calcutta  or  Bombay 
can  conceive  offense  being  taken  by  a  host  at  his  guest  ac- 
cepting, without  consulting  him,  invitations  to  dine  out  in 
the  city,  or  to  spend  some  days  at  a  villa  in  its  outskirts. 
Servants  are  in  the  corridors  by  day  and  night  at  the  call  of 
guests,  and  your  entertainers  tell  you  that,  although  they 
have  not  time  to  go  about  with  you,  servants  will  always  be 
ready  to  drive  you  at  sunset  to  the  band-stand  in  the  carriage 
of  some  member  of  the  firm. 

The  population  of  Calcutta  is  as  motley  as  that  of  Galle, 
though  the  constituents  are  not  the  same.  Greeks,  Armeni- 
ans, and  Burmese,  besides  many  Eurasians,  or  English-speak- 
ing half-castes,  mingle  with  the  mass  of  Indian  Mohamme- 
dans and  Hindoos.  The  hot  weather  having  suddenly  set  in, 
the  Calcutta  officials,  happier  than  the  merchants — who,  how- 
ever, care  little  about  heat  when  trade  is  good — were  start- 
ing for  Simla  in  a  body  "just  as  they  were  warming  to  their 
work,"  as  the  Calcutta  people  say,  and,  finding  that  there 
was  nothing  to  be  done  in  the  stifling  city,  I,  too,  determined 
to  set  off. 

The  heat  was  great  at  night,  and  the  noisy  native  crows 
and  whistling  kites  held  durbars  inside  my  window  in  the 
only  cool  hour  of  the  twenty-four — namely,  that  which  be- 
gins at  dawn — and  thus  hastened  my  departure  from  Calcut- 
ta by  preventing  me  from  taking  .rest  while  in  it.  Hearing 
that  at  Patna  there  was  nothing  to  be  seen  or  learned,  I  trav- 
elled from  Calcutta  to  Benares — 500  miles — in  the  same 
train  and  railway  carriage.  Our  first  long  stoppage  was  at 
Chandernagore,  but  as  the  native  baggage-coolies  or  porters 
howl  the  station  names  in  their  own  fashion,  I  hardly  recog- 
nized the  city  in  the  melancholy  moan  of  "  Orn-dorn-orn- 
gorne,"  which  welcomed  the  train,  and  it  was  not  till  I  saw 
a  French  infantry  uniform  upon  the  platform  that  I  remem- 
bered that  Chandernagore,  a  village  belonging  to  the  French, 
lies  hard  by  Calcutta,  to  which  city  it  was  once  a  dangerous 
rival.  It  is  said  that  the  French  retain  their  Indian  depend- 
encies instead  of  selling  them  to  us  as  did  the  Dutch,  in  or- 
der that  they  may  ever  bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  we  once 


406  Greater  Britain. 

conquered  them  in  India,  but  it  would  be  haft'd  to  find  any 
real  ground  for  their  retention  unless  they  are  held  as  centres 
for  the  Catholic  missions.  We  will  not  even  permit  them  to 
be  made  smuggling  depots,  for  which  purpose  they  would 
be  excellently  adapted.  The  whole  of  the  possessions  in  In- 
dia of  the  French  amount  together  to  only  twenty-six  leagues 
square.  Even  Pondicherry,  the  largest  and  only  French  In- 
dian dependency  of  which  the  name  is  often  heard  in  Europe, 
is  cut  into  several  portions  by  strips  of  British  territory,  and 
the  whole  of  the  French-Indian  dependencies  are  mere  specks 
of  land  isolated  in  our  vast  territories.  The  officer  who  was 
lounging  in  the  station  was  a  native ;  indeed,  in  the  territory 
of  Chandernagore  there  are  but  230  Europeans,  and  but  1500 
in  all  French  India.  He  made  up  to  my  compartment  as 
though  he  would  have  got  in,  which  I  wished  that  he  would 
have  done,  as  natives  in  the  French  service  all  speak  French, 
but  seeing  a  European,  he  edged  away  to  a  dark  uncomfort- 
able compartment.  This  action  was,  I  fear,  a  piece  of  silent 
testimony  to  the  prejudice  which  makes  our  people  in  India 
almost  invariably  refuse  to  travel  with  a  native,  whatever 
may  be  his  rank. 

As  we  passed  through  Burdwan  and  Rajmahal,  where  the 
East  Indian  Railway  taps  the  Ganges,  the  station  scenes  be- 
came more  and  more  interesting.  We  associate  with  the 
word  "railway"  ideas  that  are  peculiarly  English — share- 
holders and  directors,  guards  in  blue,  policemen  in  dark  green, 
and  porters  in  brown  corduroy  ;  no  English  institution,  how- 
ever, assumes  more  readily  an  Oriental  dress.  Station-mas- 
ters and  sparrows  alone  are  English  ;  every  thing  else  on  a 
Bengal  railway  is  purely  Eastern.  Sikh  irregulars  jostle  beg- 
ging fakeers  in  the  stations ;  palkees  and  doolies  —  palan- 
keens and  sedans,  as  we  should  call  them — wait  at  the  back- 
doors ;  ticket-clerks  smoke  water-pipes  ;  an  ibis  drinks  at  the 
engine  tank ;  a  sacred  cow  looks  over  the  fence,  and  a  tame 
elephant  reaches  up  with  his  trunk  at  the  telegraph  wire,  on 
which  sits  a  hoopoe,  while  an  Indian  vulture  crowns  the  post. 

When  Ave  came  opposite  to  the  Monghyr  Hills,  the  only 
natural  objects  which  for  1G00  miles  break  the  level  of  the 
great  plain  of  Ilindostan,  people  of  the  central  tribes,  small- 
headed  and  savage-looking,  were  mingled  With  the  Hindoos 


Madras  to  Calcutta.  407 

at  the  stations.  In  blackness  there  was  not  much  difference 
between  the  races,  for  low-caste  Bengalees  are  as  black  as 
Guinea  negroes. 

As  the  day  grew  hot,  a  water-carrier  with  a  well-filled  skin 
upon  his  back  appeared  at  every  station,  and  came  running 
to  the  native  cars  in  answer  to  the  universal  long-drawn 
shout  of  "  Ah  !  ah !  Bheestie— e !" 

The  first  view  of  the  Ganges  calls  up  no  enthusiasm.  The 
Thames  below  Gravesend  half  dried  up  would  be  not  unlike 
it ;  indeed,  the  river  itself  is  as  ugly  as  the  Mississippi  or 
Missouri,  while  its  banks  are  more  hideous  by  far  than  theirs. 
Beyond  Patna  the  plains,  too,  become  as  monotonous  as  the 
river — flat,  dusty,  and  treeless,  they  are  no  way  tropical  in 
their  character  ;  they  lie,  indeed,  wholly  outside  the  tropics. 
I  afterward  found  that  a  man  may  cross  India  from  the  Ira- 
waddy  to  the  Indus,  and  see  no  tropical  scenery,  no  tropical 
cultivation.  The  aspect  of  the  Ganges  valley  is  that  of  Cam- 
bridgeshire, or  of  parts  of  Lincoln  seen  after  harvest-time, 
and  with  flocks  of  strange  and  brilliant  birds  and  an  occasion- 
al jackal  thrown  in.  The  sun  is  hot — not,  indeed,  much  hot- 
ter than  in  Australia,  but  the  heat  is  of  a  different  kind  to 
that  encountered  by  the  English  in  Ceylon  or  the  West  In- 
dies. From  a  military  point  of  view,  the  plains  may  be  de- 
scribed as  a  parade-ground  continued  to  infinity  ;  and  this 
explains  the  success  of  our  small  forces  against  the  rebels  in 
1857,  our  calvary  and  artillery  having  in  all  cases  swept 
their  infantiy  from  these  levels  with  the  utmost  ease. 

A  view  over  the  plains  by  daylight  is  one  which  in  former 
times  some  old  Indians  can  never  have  enjoyed.  Many  a 
lady  in  the  days  of  palki-dawk  has  passed  a  life  in  the  Dec- 
can  table-land  without  ever  seeing  a  mountain,  or  knowing 
she  was  on  the  top  of  one.  Carried  up  and  down  the  ghauts 
at  night,  it  was  only  by  the  tilting  of  her  palki  that  she  could 
detect  the  rise  or  fall,  for  day  travelling  for  ladies  was  almost 
unknown  in  India  before  it  was  introduced  with  the  railways. 

At  Patna  the  station  was  filled  with  crowds  of  railway 
coolies,  or  navvies,  as  we  should  say,  who,  with  their  tools 
and  baggage,  were  camped  out  upon  the  platform,  smoking 
peacefully.  I  afterward  found  that  natives  have  little  idea 
of  time-tables  and  departure  hours.     When  they  want  to  go 


408  Greater  Britain. 

ten  miles  b,y  railway  they  walk  straight  down  to  the  nearest 
station,  and  there  smoke  their  hookahs  till  the  train  arrives 
— at  the  end  of  twenty-four  hours  or  ten  minutes,  as  the  case 
may  be.  There  is  but  one  step  that  the  more  ignorant 
among  the  natives  are  in  a  hurry  to  take,  and  that  is  to  buy 
their  tickets.  They  are  no  sooner  come  to  the  terminus  than 
with  one  accord  they  rush  at  the  native  ticket-clerk,  yelling 
the  name  of  the  station  to  which  they  wish  to  go.  In  vain 
he  declares  that,  the  train  not  being  due  for  ten  or  fifteen 
hours,  there  is  plenty  of  time  for  the  purchase.  Open-mouth- 
ed, and  wrought  up  almost  to  madness,  the  passengers  dance 
round  him,  screaming  "  Burdwan !"  or  "  Serampoor !"  or  what- 
ever the  name  may  be,  till  at  last  he  surrenders  at  discretion. 
There  is  often  no  room  for  all  who  wTish  to  go ;  indeed,  the 
worst  point  about  the  management  of  the  railways  lies  in  the 
defective  accommodation  for  the  native  passengers,  and  their 
treatment  by  the  English  station-masters  is  not  always  good : 
I  saw  them  on  many  occasions  terribly  kicked  and  cuffed ; 
but  Indian  station-masters  are  not  very  highly  paid,  and  are 
too  often  men  who  can  not  resist  the  temptations  to  violence 
which  despotic  power  throws  in  their  way.  They  might  ask, 
with  the  Missourian  in  the  United  States  army  when  he  was 
accused  of  drunkenness,  "  Whether  Uncle  Sam  expected  to 
get  all  the  cardinal  virtues  for  fifteen  dollars  a  month  ?" 

The  Indian  railways  are  all  made  and  worked  by  com- 
panies; but  as  the  Government  guarantees  the  interest  of 
five  per  cent.,  which  only  the  East  Indian  or  Calcutta  and 
Delhi  line  can  pay,  it  interferes  much  in  the  management. 
The  telegraph  is  both  made  and  worked  by  Government; 
and  the  reason  why  the  railways  were  not  put  upon  the  same 
footing  is  that  the  Government  of  India  wras  doubtful  as  to 
the  wisdom  of  borrowing  directly  the  vast  sum  required,  and 
doubtful  also  of  the  possibility  of  borrowing  it  without  dimin- 
ishing its  credit. 

The  most  marked  among  the  effects  of  railways  upon  the 
state  of  India  are,  as  a  moral  change,  the  weakening  of  caste 
ties — as  a  physical,  the  destruction  of  the  Indian  forests.  It 
is  found  that  if  a  rich  native  discovers  that  he  can,  by  losing 
caste  in  to'uching  his  inferiors,  travel  a  certain  distance  in  a 
comfortable  second-class  carriage  for  ten  rupees,  while  a  first- 


Benares.  409 

class  ticket  costs  him.  twenty,  he  will  often  risk  his  caste  to 
save  his  pound;  still  caste  yields  but  slowly  to  railways  and 
the  telegraph.  It  is  but  a  very  few  years  since  one  of  my 
friends  received  a  thousand  rupees  for  pleading  in  a  case  which 
turned  on  the  question  whether  the  paint-spot  on  Krishna's 
nose,  which  is  also  a  caste  sign,  should  be  drawn  as  a  plain 
horizontal  crescent,  or  with  a  pendant  from  the  centre.  It 
is  only  a  year  since,  in  Orissa,  it  was  seen  that  Hindoo  peas- 
ants preferred  cannibalism  or  death  by  starvation  to  defile- 
ment by  eating  their  bullocks. 

As  for  the  forests,  their  destruction  has  already  in  many 
places  changed  a  somewhat  moist  climate  to  one  of  excessive 
drought,  and  planting  is  now  taking  place,  with  a  view  both 
to  supplying  the  railway  engines  and  bringing  back  the  rains. 
On  the  East  Indian  line  I  found  that  they  burned  mixed  coal 
and  wood,  but  the  Indian  coal  is  scarce  and  bad,  and  lies  en- 
tirely in  shallow  "  pockets." 

The  train  reached  Mogul-Serai,  the  function  for  Benares, 
at  midnight  of  the  day  following  that  on  which  it  left  Cal- 
cutta, and  changing  my  carriage  at  once,  I  asked  how  long  it 
would  be  before  we  started,  to  which  the  answer  was,  "half 
an  hour ;"  so  I  went  to  sleep.  Immediately,  as  it  seemed,  I 
was  awakened  by  whispering,  and,  turning,  saw  a  crowd  of 
boys  and  baggage-coolies  at  the  carriage-door.  When  I  tried 
to  discover  what  they  wanted  my  Hindostanee  broke  down, 
and  it  was  some  time  before  I  found  that  I  had  slept  through 
the  short  journey  from  Mogul-Serai,  and  had  dozed  on  in  the 
station  till  the  lights  had  been  put  out  before  the  coolies 
woke  me.  Crossing  the  Ganges  by  the  bridge  of  boats,  I 
found  myself  in  Benares,  the  ancient  Varanasi,  and  sacred 
capital  of  the  Hindoos. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

BENARES. 

In  the  comparative  cool  of  early  morning  I  sallied  out  on 
a  stroll  through  the  outskirts  of  Benares.  Thousands  of 
women  were  stepping  gracefully  along  the  crowded  roads, 
bearing  on  their  heads  the  water-jars,  while  at  every  few 

S 


•ilO  GllEATEK    BRITAIN. 

paces  there  was  a  well,  at  which  hundreds  Averc  waiting 
along  with  the  bheesties  their  turn  for  lowering  their  bright 
gleaming  copper  cups  to  the  well-water  to  fill  their  skins  or 
vases.  All  were  keeping  up  a  continual  chatter,  women  with 
women,  men  with  men :  all  the  tongues  were  running  cease- 
lessly. It  is  astonishing  to  see  the  indignation  that  a  trifling 
mishap  creates — such  gesticulation,  such  shouting,  and  loud 
talk,  you  would  think  that  murder  at  least  was  in  question. 
The  world  can  not  show  the  Hindoo's  equal  as  a  babbler ; 
the  women  talk  while  they  grind  corn,  the  men  while  they 
smoke  their  water-pipes ;  your  true  Hindoo  is  never  quiet ; 
when  not  talking  he  is  playing  on  his  tomtom. 

The  Doorgha  Khond,  the  famed  Temple  of  the  Sacred 
Monkeys,  I  found  thronged  with  worshipers  and  garlanded 
in  every  part  with  roses :  it  overhangs  one  of  the  best  holy 
tanks  in  India,  but  has  not  much  beauty  or  grandeur,  and 
is  chiefly  remarkable  for  the  swarms  of  huge,  fat-paunched, 
yellow  -  bearded,  holy  monkeys,  whose  outposts  hold  one 
quarter  of  the  city,  and  whose  main  body  forms  a  living 
roof  to  the  temple.  A  singular  contrast  to  the  Doorgha 
Khond  was  the  Queen's  College  for  native  students,  built  in 
a  mixture  of  Tudor  and  Hindoo  architecture.  The  view 
from  the  roof  is  noticeable,  depending  as  it  does  for  its 
beauty  on  the  mingling  of  the  rich  green  of  the  timber  with 
the  gay  colors  of  the  painted  native  huts.  Over  the  trees 
are  seen  the  minarets  at  the  river-side,  and  an  unwonted  life 
was  given  to  the  view  by  the  smoke  and  flames  that  Mere 
rising  from  two  burning  huts  in  widely-separated  districts 
of  the  native  town.  It  is  said  that  the  natives,  Avhenever 
they  quarrel  with  their  neighbors,  always  take  the  first  op- 
portunity of  firing  their  huts;  but  in  truth  the  huts  in  the 
hot  weather  almost  fire  themselves,  so  inflammable  are  their 
roofs  and  sides. 

When  the  sun  had  declined  sufficiently  to  admit  of  an- 
other excursion  I  started  from  my  bungaloAV,  and,  passing 
through  the  elephant-corral,  went  down  with  a  guide  to  the 
ghauts,  the  observatory  of  Jai  Singh,  and  the  Golden  Tem- 
ple. From  the  minarets  of  the  Mosque  of  Aurungzebe  I  had 
a  lovely  sunset  view  of  the  ghauts,  the  city,  and  the  Ganges ; 
but  the  real  sight  of  Benares,  after  all,  lies  in  a  walk  through 


Benauks.  411 

the  tortuous  passages  that  do  duty  for  streets.  No  carriages 
can  pass  them,  they  are  so  narrow.  You  walk  preceded  by 
your  guide,  who  warns  the  people,  that  they  may  stand  aside 
and  not  be  defiled  by  your  touch,  for  that  is  the  real  secret 
of  the  apparent  respect  paid  to  you  in  Benares ;  but  the  sa- 
cred cows  are  so  numerous  and  so  obstinate  that  you  can  not 
avoid  sometimes  jostling  them.  The  scene  in  the  passages  is 
the  most  Indian  in  India.  The  gaudy  dresses  of  the  Hindoo 
princes  spending  a  week  in  purification  at  the  holy  place,  the 
frescoed  fronts  of  the  shops  and  houses,  the  deafening  beating 
of  the  tomtoms,  and,  above  all,  the  smoke  and  sickening 
smell  from  the  "burning  ghauts"  that  meets  you,  mingled 
with  a  sweeter  smell  of  burning  spices,  as  you  work  your 
way  through  the  vast  crowds  of  pilgrims  who  are  pouring 
up  from  the  river's  bank — all  alike  are  strange  to  the  En- 
glish traveller,  and  fill  his  mind  with  that  indescribable  awe 
which  everywhere  accompanies  the  sight  of  scenes  and  cere- 
monies that  we  do  not  understand.  When  once  you  are  on 
the  Ganges  bank  itself  the  scene  is  wilder  still :  a  river-front 
of  some  three  miles,  faced  with  lofty  ghauts  or  flights  of  river 
stairs,  over  which  rise,  pile  above  pile,  in  sublime  confusion, 
lofty  palaces  with  oriel  windows  hanging  over  the  sacred 
stream ;  observatories  with  giant  sun-dials,  gilt  domes  {gold- 
en, the  story  runs),  and  silver  minarets.  On  the  ghauts,  rows 
of  fires,  each  with  a  smouldering  body ;  on  the  river,  boat- 
loads of  pilgrims  and  fakeers,  praying  while  they  float; 
under  the  houses,  lines  of  prostrate  bodies — those  of  the  sick 
— brought  to  the  sacred  Ganges  to  die — or,  say  our  Govern- 
ment spies,  to  be  murdered  by  suffocation  with  sacred  mud, 
while  prowling  about  are  the  wolf-like  fanatics  who  feed  on  pu- 
trid flesh.  The  whole  is  lit  by  a  sickly  sun  fitfully  glaring 
through  the  smoke,  while  the  Ganges  stream  is  half  obscured 
by  the  river  fog  and  reek  of  the  hot  earth. 

The  lofty  pavilions  that  crown  the  river-frcnt  are  orna- 
mented with  paintings  of  every  beast  that  walks  and  bird 
that  flies,  with  monsters,  too — pink  and  green  and  spotted — 
with  griffins,  dragons,  and  elephant-headed  gods  embracing 
dancing-girls.  Here  and  there  are  representations  of  red- 
coated  soldiers — English,  it  would  seem,  for  they  have  white 
faces,  but  so,  the  Maories  say,  have  the  New  Zealand  fairies, 


412  Greater  Britain. 

who  arc  certainly  not  British.  The  Benares  taste  for  paint- 
ing leads  to  the  decoration  with  pink  and  yellow  spots  of  the 
very  cows.  The  tiger  is  the  commonest  of  all  the  figures 
on  the  walls ;  indeed,  the  explanation  that  the  representa- 
tions are  allegorical,  or  that  gods  are  pictured  in  tiger  shape, 
has  not  removed  from  my  mind  the  belief  that  the  tiger 
must  have  been  worshiped  in  India  at  some  early  date.  All 
Easterns  are  inclined  to  worship  the  beasts  that  eat  them : 
the  Javanese  light  floating  sacrifices  to  their  river  crocodiles; 
the  Scindees  at  Kurrachee  venerate  the  sacred  mugger,  or 
man-eating  alligator;  the  hill-tribes  pray  to  snakes;  indeed, 
to  a  new-comer,  all  Indian  religion  has  the  air  of  devil-wor- 
ship, or  worship  of  the  destructive  principle  in  some  shape : 
the  gods  are  drawn  as  grinning  fiends,  they  are  propitiated 
by  infernal  music,  they  are  often  worshiped  with  obscene  and 
hideous  rites.  There  is  even  something  cruel  in  the  monot- 
onous roar  of  the  great  tomtoms ;  the  sound  seems  to  con- 
nect itself  with  widow-burning,  with  child-murder,  with  Jug- 
gernauth  processions.  Since  the  earliest  known  times  the  tom- 
tom has  been  used  to  drown  the  cries  of  tortured  fanatics ;  its 
booming  is  bound  up  with  the  thousand  barbarisms  of  false 
religion.  If  the  scene  on  the  Benares  ghauts  is  full  of  hor- 
rors, we  must  not  forget  that  Hindooism  is  a  creed  of  fear 
and  horror,  not  of  love. 

The  Government  of  India  has  lately  instituted  an  inquiry 
into  the  alleged  abuses  of  the  custom  of  taking  sick  Hindoos 
to  the  Ganges-side  to  die,  with  a  view  to  regulating  or  sup- 
pressing the  practice  which  prevails  in  the  river-side  portion 
of  Lower  Bengal.  At  Benares  Bengal  people  are  still  taken 
to  the  river-side,  but  not  so  other  natives,  as  Hindoos  dying 
anywhere  in  the  sacred  city  have  all  the  blessings  which 
the  most  holy  death  can  possibly  secure  ;  the  Benares  Shas- 
tra,  moreover,  forbids  the  practice,  and  I  saw  but  two  cases 
of  it  in  the  city,  although  I  had  seen  many  near  Calcutta. 
Not  only  are  aged  people  brought  from  their  sick-rooms,  laid 
in  the  burning  sun,  and  half  suffocated  with  the  Ganges  water 
poured  down  their  throats,  but,  owing  to  the  ridicule  which 
follows  if  they  recover,  or  the  selfishness  of  their  relatives, 
the  water  is  often  muddier  than  it  need  be  ;  hence  the  phrase 
"  ghaut  murder,"  by  which  this  custom  is  generally  known. 


Benares.  413 

Similar  customs  arc  not  unheard  of  in  other  parts  of  India, 
and  even  in  Polynesia  and  North  America.  The  Veddahs  or 
black  aborigines  of  Ceylon  were,  up  to  very  lately,  in  the 
habit  of  carrying  their  dying  parents  or  children  into  the 
jungle,  and,  having  placed  a  chatty  of  water  and  some  rice 
by  their  side,  leaving  them  to  be  devoured  by  wild  beasts. 
Under  pressure  from  our  officials  they  are  believed  to  have 
ceased  to  act  thus,  but  they  continue,  we  are  told,  to  throw 
their  dead  to  the  leopards  and  crocodiles.  The  Maories,  too, 
have  a  May  of  taking  out  to  die  alone  those  whom  their  seers 
have  pronounced  doomed  men,  but  it  is  probable  that  among 
the  rude  races  the  custom  which  seems  to  be  a  relic  of  human 
sacrifice  has  not  been  so  grossly  abused  as  it  has  been  by  the 
Bengal  Hindoos.  The  practice  of  Ganjatra  is  but  one  out  of 
many  similar  barbarities  that  disgrace  the  religion  of  the 
Hindoos,  but  it  is  fast  sharing  the  fate  of  suttee  and  infanti- 
cide. 

As  I  returned  through  the  bazar  I  met  many  most  unholy- 
looking  visitors  to  the  sacred  town.  Fierce  Rajpoots,  with 
enormous  turbans  ornamented  with  zigzag  stripes ;  Bengal 
bankers,  in  large  purple  turbans,  curling  their  long  white 
mustaches,  and  bearing  their  critical  noses  high  aloft  as  they 
daintily  picked  their  way  over  the  garbage  of  the  streets ; 
and  savage  retainers  of  the  rajahs  staying  for  a  season  at 
their  city  palaces,  were  to  the  traveller's  eye  no  very  devout 
pilgrims.  In  truth,  the  immoralities  of  the  "  holy  city  "  are 
as  great  as  its  religious  virtues,  and  it  is  the  chosen  ground 
of  the  loose  characters  as  well  as  of  the  pilgrims  of  the  Hin- 
doo world. 

In  the  whole  of  the  great  throng  in  the  bazar  hardly  the 
slightest  trace  of  European  dressing  was  to  be  perceived  : 
the  varnished  boots  of  the  wealthier  Hindoos  alone  bore  wit- 
ness to  the  existence  of  English  trade — a  singular  piece  of 
testimony,  this,  to  the  essential  conservatism  of  the  Oriental 
mind.  With  any  quantity  of  old  army  clothing  to  be  got 
for  the  asking,  you  never  see  a  rag  of  it  on  a  native  back — 
not  even  on  that  of  the  poorest  coolie.  If  you  give  a  blanket 
to  an  out-door  servant  he  will  cut  it  into  strips,  and  wear 
them  as  a  puggree  round  his  head  ;  but  this  is  about  the  only 
thing  he  will  accept,  unless  to  sell  it  in  the  bazar. 


41-1  Greater  Britain. 

As  I  stopped  to  look  for  a  moment  at  the  long  trains  of 
laden  camels  that  were  winding  slowly  through  the  tortu- 
ous streets  I  saw  a  European  soldier  cheapening  a  bracelet 
with  a  native  jeweller.  He  was  the  first  topee-wallah  ("hat- 
fellow,"  or  "European")  that  I  had  seen  in  Benares  city. 
Calcutta  is  the  only  town  in  Northern  India  in  which  you 
meet  Europeans  in  your  walks  or  rides,  and  even  there  there 
is  but  one  European  to  every  sixty  natives.  In  all  India, 
there  are,  including  troops,  children,  and  officials  of  all  kinds, 
far  less  than  as  many  thousands  of  Europeans  as  there  are 
millions  of  natives. 

The  evening  after  that  on  which  I  visited  the  native  town  I 
saw  in  Secrole  cantonments,  near  Benares,  the  India  hated  and 
dreaded  by  our  troops — by  day  a  blazing  deadly  heat  and  sun, 
at  night  a  still  more  deadly  fog — a  hot  white  fog,  into  which 
the  sun  disappears  half  an  hour  before  his  time  for  setting, 
and  out  of  which  he  shoots  soon  after  seven  in  the  morning, 
to  blaze  and  kill  again — a  pestiferous,  fever-breeding  ground- 
fog,  out  of  which  stand  the  tops  of  the  palms,  though  their 
stems  are  invisible  in  the  steam.  Compared  with  our  En- 
glish summer  climate,  it  seems  the  atmosphere  of  another 
planet. 

Among  the  men  in  the  cantonments  I  found  much  of  that 
demoralization  that  heat  everywhere  produces  among  En- 
glishmen. The  newly-arrived  soldiers  appear  to  pass  their 
days  in  alternate  trials  of  hard  drinking  and  of  total  absti- 
nence, and  are  continually  in  a  state  of  nervous  fright,  which 
in  time  must  wear  them  out  and  make  them  an  easy  prey  to 
fever.  The  officers  who  are  fresh  from  England  often  behave 
in  much  the  same  manner  as  the  men,  though  with  them 
"  belatee  pawnee  "  takes  the  place  of  plain  water  with  the 
brandy.  "  Belatee  pawnee  "  means,  being  translated,  "  En- 
glish water,"  but  when  interpreted  it  means  "  soda-water  " — 
the  natives  once  believing  that  this  was  English  river  water, 
bottled  and  brought  to  India  by  us  as  they  carry  Ganges 
water  to  the  remotest  parts.  The  superstition  is  now  at  an 
end,  owing  to  the  fact  that  natives  are  themselves  largely 
employed  in  the  making  of  soda-water,  which  is  cheaper  in 
India  than  it  is  at  home  ;  but  the  name  remains.      • 

Our  men  kill  themselves  with  beer,  with  brandy  and  soda- 


Caste.  415 

water,  and  with  careless  inattention  to  night  chills,  and  then 
blame  the  poor  climate  for  their  levers,  or  die  cursing  "In- 
dia." Of  course  long  residence  in  a  climate  winterless  and 
always  hot  at  midday  produces  or  intensifies  certain  diseases  ; 
but  brandy  and  soda-water  produces  more,  and  intensifies  all. 
They  say  it  is  "  soda-and-brandy"  the  first  month,  and  then 
"  brandy-and-soda,"  but  that  men  finally  take  to  putting  in 
the  soda-water  first,  and  then  somehow  the  brandy  always 
kills  them.  If  a  man  wears  a  flannel  belt  and  thick  clothes 
when  he  travels  by  night,  and  drinks  hot  tea,  he  need  not 
fear  India. 

In  all  ways  Benares  is  the  type  of  India :  in  the  Secrole 
cantonments  you  have  the  English  in  India,  intelligent  enough, 
but  careless,  and  more  English  than  they  are  at  home,  with 
garrison  chaplains,  picnics,  balls,  and  champagne  suppers; 
hard  by,  in  the  native  town,  the  fierce  side  of  Hindooism,  and 
streets  for  an  Englishman  to  show  himself  in  which  ten  years 
ago  was  almost  certain  death.  Benares  is  the  centre  of  all 
the  political  intrigues  of  India,  but  the  great  mutiny  itself 
was  hatched  there  without  being  heard  of  at  Secrole.  Ex- 
cept that  our  policemen  now  perambulate  the  town,  change 
in  Benares  there  has  been  none.  "Were  missionaries  to  appear 
openly  in  its  streets  their  fate  would  still  very  possibly  be 
the  same  as  that  which  in  this  city  befell  St.  Thomas. 


CHAPTER  V. 

CASTE. 

One  of  the  gi-eatest  difficulties  with  which  the  British 
have  to  contend  in  Hindostan  is  how  to  discover  the  tenden- 
cies, how  to  follow  the  changes,  of  native  opinion.  Your  Hin- 
doo is  so  complaisant  a  companion  that,  whether  he  is  your 
servant  at  threepence  a  day  or  the  ruler  of  the  State  in  which 
you  dwell,  he  is  perpetually  striving  to  make  his  opinions  the 
reflex  of  your  own.  You  are  engaged  in  a  continual  strug- 
gle to  prevent  your  views  from  being  seen  in  order  that  you 
may  get  at  his :  in  this  you  always  fail ;  a  slight  hint  is 
enough  for  a  Hindoo,  and,  if  he  can  not  find  even  that  much 


416  Greater  Britain-. 

of  suggestion  in  your  words,  lie  confines  himself  to  common- 
place. "VVe  should  see  in  this  not  so  much  one  of  the  forms 
assumed  by  the  cringing  slavishness  horn  of  centuries  of  sub- 
jection, not  so  much  an  example  of  Oriental  cunning,  as  of 
the  polish  of  Eastern  manners.  Even  in  our  rude  country  it 
is  hardly  courteous,  whatever  your  opinions,  flatly  to  contra- 
dict the  man  with  whom  you  happen  to  be  talking  ;  with  the 
Hindoo,  it  is  the  height  of  ill-breeding  so  much  as  to  difter 
from  him.  The  results  of  the  practice  are  deplorable ;  our 
utter  ignorance  of  the  secret  history  of  the  rebellion  of  1857 
is  an  example  of  its  working,  for  there  must  have  been  a  time, 
before  discontent  ripened  into  conspiracy,  when  we  might 
have  been  advised  and  warned.  The  native  newspapers  are 
worse  than  useless  to  us ;  accepted  as  exponents  of  Hindoo 
views  by  those  who  know  no  better,  and  founded  mostly  by 
British  capital,  they  are  at  once  incapable  of  directing  and  of 
acting  as  indexes  to  native  opinion,  and  express  only  the  sen- 
timents of  half  a  dozen  small  merchants  at  the  presidency 
towns,  who  give  the  tone  to  some  two  or  three  papers,  which 
are  copied  and  followed  by  the  remainder. 

The  result  of  this  difficulty  in  discovering  native  o'pin- 
ion  is  that  our  officers,  however  careful,  however  considerate 
in  their  bearing  toward  the  natives,  daily  wound  the  feel- 
ings of  the  peopl.e  who  are  under  their  care  by  acts  which, 
though  done  in  a  praiseworthy  spirit,  appear  to  the  natives 
deeds  of  gross  stupidity  or  of  outrageous  despotism.  It  is 
hopeless  to  attempt  to  conciliate,  it  is  impossible  so  much 
as  to  govern,  unless  by  main  force  continually  displayed,  an 
Eastern  people  in  whose  religious  thought  we  are  not  deeply 
learned. 

Not  only  are  we  unacquainted  with  the  feelings  of  the 
people,  but  we  are  lamentably  ignorant  of  the  simplest  facts 
about  their  religions,  their  wealth,  and  their  occupations,  for 
no  census  of  all  India  has  yet  been  taken.  A  complete  cen- 
sus had,  indeed,  been  taken,  not  long  before  my  visit ;  in  Cen- 
tral India,  and  another  in  the  North-west  Provinces,  but  none 
in  Madras,  Bombay,  the  Punjaub,  or  Bengal.  The  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  the  officials  who  carried  through  the  arrange- 
ments for  the  two  that  had  been  taken  were  singiriarly  great. 
In  the  Central  Provinces  the  census-papers  had  to  he  pre- 


Caste.  417 

pared  ia  live  languages;  both  here  and  in  the  North-west 
the  purely  scientific  nature  of  the  inquiry  had  to  he  brought 
home  to  the  minds  of  the  people.  In  Central  India  the  hill- 
tribes  believed  that  our  object  in  the  census  was  to  pave 
the  way  for  the  collection  of  the  unmarried  girls  as  compan- 
ions for  our  wifeless  soldiers,  so  all  began  marrying  forth- 
Avith.  In  the  North-west  the  natives  took  it  into  their  heads 
that  our  object  was  to  see  how  many  able-bodied  men  would 
be  available  for  a  war  against  Russia,  and  to  collect  a  poll- 
tax  to  pay  for  the  expedition.  The  numerous  tribes  that  are 
habitually  guilty  of  infanticide  threw  every  difficulty  in  the 
way;  Europeans  disliked  the  whole  affair,  on  account  of  the 
insult  offered  to  their  dignity  in  ranking  them  along  with 
natives.  It  must  be  admitted,  indeed,  that  the  provisions  for 
recording  caste  distinctions  gave  an  odd  shape  to  the  census- 
papers  left  at  the  houses  at  Secrole,  in  which  European  offi- 
cers were  asked  to  state  their  "  caste  or  tribe."  The  census 
■of  the  Central  Provinces  was  imperfect  enough,  but  that  of, 
the  North-west  was  the  second  that  had  been  taken  there, 
and  showed  signs  of  scientific  arrangement  and  great  care. 

The  North- vest  Provinces  include  the  great  towns  of  Be- 
nares, Agra,  and  Allahabad,  and  the  census  fell  into  my  hands 
at  Benares  itself,  at  the  Sanscrit  College.  It  was  a  strange 
production,  and  seemed  to  have  brought  together  a  mass  of 
information  respecting  castes  and  creeds  which  was  new  even 
to  those  who  had  lived  long  in  the  North-west  Provinces. 
All  callings  in  India  being  hereditary,  there  were  entries  re- 
cording the  presence  in  certain  towns  of  "  hereditary  clerks 
who  pray  to  their  ink-horns,"  "  hereditary  beggars,"  "  heredi- 
tary planters  of  slips  or  cuttings,"  "hereditary  grave-dig- 
gers," "  hereditary  hermits,"  and  "  hereditary  hangmen,"  for 
in  India  a  hangmanship  descends  with  as  much  regularity  as 
a  crown.  In  the  single  district  of  the  Dehra  Valley  there 
are  1500  "hereditary  tomtom  men" — drummers  at  the  festi- 
vals; 234  Brahmin  of  Bijnour  returned  themselves  as  having 
for  profession  "  the  receipt  of  presents  to  avert  the  influence 
of  evil  stars."  In  Bijnour  there  are  also  fifteen  people  of  a 
caste  which  professes  "  the  pleasing  of  people  by  assuming 
disguises,"  while  at  Benares  there  is  a  whole  caste — the  Bhats 
— whose  hereditary  occupation  is  to  "  satirize  the  enemies  of 

S  2 


418  Greater  Britain. 

the  rich,  and  to  praise  their  friends."  In  the  North-west 
Provinces  there  are  572  distinct  castes  in  all. 

The  accounts  which  some  castes  gave  of  their  origin  read 
strangely  in  a  solemn  governmental  document :  the  members 
of  one  caste  described  themselves  as  "descended  from  Mai- 
casur,  a  demon ;"  but  some  of  the  records  are  less  legendary 
and  more  historic.  One  caste  in  the  Dehra  Valley  sent  in  a 
note  that  they  came  in  1000  a.d.  from  the  Deccan;  another 
that  they  emigrated  from  Arabia  500  years  ago.  The  Gour 
Brahmins  claim  to  have  been  in  the  district  of  Moozuffer- 
nuggur  for  5000  years. 

Under  the  title  of  " occupations"  the  heads  of  families 
alone  were  given,  and  not  the  number  of  those  dependent  on 
them,  whence  it  comes  that  in  the  whole  province  only  "  11,000 
tomtom-players  "  were  set  down.  The  habits  and  tastes  of 
the  people  are  easily  seen  in  the  entries :  "  3600  fire-work 
manufacturers,"  "  45  makers  of  crowns  for  idols,"  "  4353  gold- 
bangle  makers,"  "  29,1 36  glass-bangle  makers,"  "1123  astrol- 
ogers." There  are  also  145  "ear-cleaners,"  besides  "kite- 
makers,"  "  ear-piercers,"  "  pedigree-makers,"  "  makers  of  caste- 
marks,"  "  cow-dung  sellers,"  and  "  hereditary  painters  of 
horses  with  spots."  There  was  no  backwardness  in  the  fol- 
lowers of  maligned  pursuits :  974  people  in  Allahabad  de- 
scribed themselves  as  "low  blackguards,"  35  as  "men  who 
beg  with  threats  of  violence,"  25  as  "  hereditary  robbers," 
479,015  as  "beggars,"  29  as  "howlers  at  funerals,"  226  as 
"  flatterers  for  gain ;"  "  vagabonds,"  "  charmers,"  "  inform- 
ers" were  all  set  down,  and  1100  returned  themselves  as 
"hereditary  buffoons,"  while  2000  styled  themselves  "con- 
jurers," 4000  "acrobats,"  and  6372  "poets."  In  one  district 
alone  there  were  777  " sooth-sayers  and  astrologers"  by  pro- 
fession. 

It  is  worthy  of  notice  that,  although  there  are  in  the 
North-west  Provinces  half  a  million  of  beggars  in  a  popula- 
tion of  thirty  millions,  they  seem  never  to  beg  of  Europeans 
— at  least  I  was  not  once  asked  for  alms  during  my  stay  in 
India.  If  the  smallest  service  be  performed  there  comes  a 
howl  of  "  Oh,  bauks-heece !"  from  all  quarters,  but  at  other 
times  natives  seem  afraid  to  beg  of  Englishmen. 

The  number  of  fakeers,  soothsayers,  charmers,  and  other 


Caste.  419 

u  religious  "  vagabonds  is  enormous,  but  the  dense  ignorance 
of  the  people  renders  them  a  prey  to  witchcraft,  evil-eye,  devil- 
influence,  and  all  such  folly.  In  Central  India  there  are 
whole  districts  which  are  looked  upon  as  witch-tracts  or 
haunted  places,  and  which  are  never  approached  by  man,  but 
set  aside  as  homes  for  devils.  A  gentleman  who  was  lately 
engaged  there  on  the  railroad  survey  found  that  night  after 
night  his  men  were  frightened  out  of  their  wits  by  "  fire- 
fiends"  or  blazing  demons.  He  insisted  that  they  should 
take  him  to  the  spot  where  these  strange  sights  were  seen, 
and  to  his  amazement  he  too  saw  the  fire-devil ;  at  least  he 
saw  a  blaze  of  light  moving  slowly  through  the  jungle. 
Gathering  himself  up  for  a  chase,  he  rushed  at  the  devil  with 
a  club,  when  the  light  suddenly  disappeared,  and  instantly 
shone  out  from  another  spot,  a  hundred  yards  from  the  former 
place.  Seeing  that  there  was  some  trickery  at  work,  he  hid 
himself,  and  after  some  hours  caught  his  devil,  who,  to  escape 
from  a  sound  drubbing,  gave  an  explanation  of  the  whole  af- 
fair. The  man  said  that  the  natives  of  the  surveyor's  party 
had  stolen  his  mangoes  for  several  nights,  but  that  at  last  he 
had  hit  on  a  plan  for  frightening  them  away.  He  and  his 
sons  went  out  at  dark  with  pots  of  blazing  oil  upon  their 
heads,  and  when  approached  by  thieves  the  leading  one  put 
a  cover  on  his  pot,  and  became  invisible,  while  the  second 
uncovered  his.  The  surveying  party  got  the  drubbing,  and 
the  devil  escaped  scot-free;  but  the  surveyor,  with  short- 
sighted wisdom,  told  his  men,  who  had  not  seen  him  catch 
the  fire-bearer,  that  he  had  had  the  honor  of  an  interview  with 
the  devil  himself,  Avho  had  joyfully  informed  him  of  the  thefts 
committed  by  the  men.  The  surveyor  did  not  admit  that  ho 
was  from  this  time  forward  worshiped  by  his  party,  but  it  is 
not  unlikely  that  such  was  the  case.  One  of  the  hill-tribes 
of  Madras  worships  Colonel  Palmer,  a  British  officer  Mho 
died  some  seventy  years  ago,  just  as  Drake  was  worshiped  in 
America,  and  Captain  Cook  in  Hawaii.  It  was  one  of  these 
tribes  that  invented  the  well-known  worshiping  machine  or 
"  praying- wheel." 

The  hill-tribes  arc  less  refined  but  hardly  more  ignorant  in 
their  fanaticism  than  are  the  Hindoos.  At  Bombay,  upon 
the  beach  where  the  dead  are  buried,  or  rather  tossed  to  the 


420  Greater  Britain. 

wild  beasts,  I  saw  a  filthy  and  holy  Hindoo  saint,  whose 
claim  to  veneration  consists  in  his  having  spent  the  whole  of 
the  days  and  portions  of  the  nights  for  twenty  years  in  a  stone 
box  in  which  he  can  neither  stand,  nor  lie,  nor  sit,  nor  sleep. 
These  saintly  fakeers  have  still  much  influence  with  the  Hin- 
doo mass,  but  in  old  times  their  power  and  their  insolence 
were  alike  unbounded.  Agra  itself  was  founded  to  please 
one  of  them.  The  great  Emperor  Akbar,  who,  although  a 
lax  Mohammedan,  was  in  no  sense  a  Hindoo,  kept  neverthe- 
less a  Hindoo  saint  for  political  purposes,  and  gave  him  the 
foremost  position  in  his  train.  When  the  Emperor  was  be- 
ginning to  fortify  Futtehpore  Sikri,  where  he  lived,  the  saint 
sent  for  him,  and  said  that  the  work  must  be  stopped,  as  the 
noise  disturbed  him  at  his  prayers.  The  Emperor  oflered 
him  new  rooms  away  from  the  site  of  the  proposed  walls, 
but  the  saint  replied  that,  whether  Akbar  went  on  with  his 
works  or  no,  he  should  leave  Futtehpore.  To  pacify  him, 
Akbar  founded  Agra,  and  dismantled  Futtehpore  Sikri. 

From  the  census  it  appears  that  there  are  in  the  North- 
west Provinces  no  less  than  twenty-two  newspapers  under 
Government  inspection,  of  which  five  are  published  at  Agra. 
The  circulation  of  these  papers  is  extremely  small,  and  as 
the  Government  itself  takes  3500  of  the  12,000  copies  which 
they  issue,  its  hold  over  them,  without  exertion  of  force,  is 
great.  Of  the  other  8500,  8000  go  to  native  and  500  to  Eu- 
ropean subscribers.  All  the  native  papers  are  skillful  at 
catering  for  their  double  public,  but  those  which  are  printed 
half  in  a  native  tongue  and  half  in  English  stand  in  the  first 
rank  for  unscrupulousness.  One  of  these  papers  gave,  while 
I  was  in  India,  some  French  speech  in  abuse  of  the  English. 
This  was  headed  on  the  English  side  "Interesting  Account 
of  the  English,"  but  on  the  native  side  "Excellent  Account 
of  the  English."  The  "English  correspondence"  and  En- 
glish news  of  these  native  papers  is  so  absurdly  concocted  by 
the  editors  out  of  their  own  brains  that  it  is  a  question 
whether  it  would  not  be  advisable  to  send  them  weekly  a 
column  of  European  news,  and  even  to  withhold  Government 
patronage  from  them  unless  they  gave  it  room,  leaving  them 
to  qualify  and  explain  the  facts  as  best  they  could.  Their 
favorite  statements  are  that  Russia  is  going  to  invade  India 


Caste.  421 

forthwith,  that  the  queen  has  become  a  Catholic  or  a  Mo- 
hammedan, and  that  the  whole  population  of  India  is  to  be 
converted  to  Christianity  by  force.  The  external  appear- 
ance of  the  native  papers  is  sometimes  as  comical  as  their 
matter.  The  Umritsur  Commercial  Advertiser,  of  which  noth- 
ing is  English  but  the  title,  gives,  for  instance,  the  time-tables 
of  the  Punjaub  Railway  on  its  back  sheet.  The  page,  which 
is  a  mere  maze  of  dots  and  crooked  lines,  has  at  the  top  a  cut 
of  a  railway  train,  in  which  guards  apparently  cocked-hatted, 
but  probably  meant  to  be  wearing  pith  helmets,  are  repre- 
sented sitting  on  the  top  of  each  carriage  with  their  legs 
dangling  down  in  front  of  the  windows. 

Neither  Christianity  nor  native  reformed  religions  make 
much  show  in  the  North-western  census.  The  Christians 
are  strongest  in  the  South  of  India,  the  Hindoo  reformers  in 
the  Punjaub.  The  Sikhs  themselves,  and  the  Kookhas,  Ni- 
rnnkarees,  Goolab  Dasseas,  Naukeeka-punth,  and  many  other 
Punjaubee  sects,  all  show  more  or  less  hostility  to  caste; 
but  in  the  North-west  Provinces  caste  distinctions  flourish, 
although  in  reality  they  have  no  doubt  lost  strength.  The 
high-caste  men  are  beginning  to  find  their  caste  a  drawback 
to  their  success  in  life,  and  are  given  to  concealing  it.  Just 
as  with  ourselves  kings  go  incognito  when  they  travel  for 
pleasure,  so  the  Bengal  sepoy  hides  his  Brahminical  string 
under  his  cloth,  in  order  that  he  may  be  sent  on  foreign  serv- 
ice without  its  being  known  that  by  crossing  the  seas  he  will 
lose  caste. 

Judging  by  the  unanimous  opinion  of  the  native  press  on 
the  doings  of  the  Maharajahs  of  Bombay,  and  on  the  licen- 
tiousness of  the  Koolin  Brahmins,  many  of  our  civilians  have 
come  to  think  that  Hindooism  in  its  present  shape  had  lost 
the  support  of  a  large  number  of  the  more  intelligent  Hin- 
doos, but  there  is  little  real  reason  to  believe  that  this  is  the 
case.  In  Calcutta  the  Church  of  Hindoo  Deists  is  gaining 
ground,  and  one  of  their  leaders  is  said  to  have  met  with 
some  successes  during  a  recent  expedition  to  the  North- 
west, but  of  this  there  is  no  proof.  The  little  regard  that 
many  high-caste  natives  show  for  caste  except  as  a  matter 
of  talk  merely  means  that  caste  is  less  an  affair  of  religion 
than  of  custom,  but  that  it  is  a  matter  of  custom  does  not 


422  Greater  Britain. 

show  that  its  force  is  slight ;  on  the  contrary,  custom  is  the 
lord  of  India. 

The  success  of  Mohammedanism  in  India  should  show 
that  caste  has  never  been  strong  except  so  far  as  caste  is  cus- 
tom. It  is  true  that  the  peasants  in  Orissa  starved  by  the 
side  of  the  sacred  cows,  but  this  was  custom  too :  any  one 
man  killing  the  cow  would  have  been  at  once  killed  by  his 
also  starving  neighbors  for  breaking  custom ;  but  once  change 
the  custom  by  force,  and  there  is  no  tendency  to  return  to 
the  former  state  of  things.  The  Portuguese  and  the  Moham- 
medans alike  made  converts  by  compulsion,  yet  when  the 
pressure  was  removed  there  was  no  return  to  the  earlier  faith. 
Of  the  nature  of  caste  we  had  an  excellent  example  in  the 
behavior  of  the  troopers  of  a  Bengal  cavalry  regiment  three 
weeks  before  the  outbreak  of  the  mutiny  of  1857,  when  they 
said  that  for  their  part  they  knew  that  their  cartridges  were 
not  greased  with  the  fat  of  cows,  but  that,  as  they  looked  as 
though  they  were,  it  came  to  the  same  thing,  for  they  should 
lose  caste  if  their  friends  saw  them  touch  the  cartridges  in 
question. 

It  was  the  cry  of  infringement  of  custom  that  was  raised 
against  us  by  the  mutineers:  "They  aim  at  subverting  our 
institutions;  they  have  put  down  the  suttee  of  the  Brahmins, 
the  infanticide  of  the  Marattas,  caste  and  adoption  are  de- 
spised; they  aim  at  destroying  all  our  religious  customs," 
was  the  most  powerful  cry  that  could  be  raised.  It  is  one 
against  which  we  shall  never  be  wholly  safe  ;  but  it  is  the  cus- 
tom and  not  the  religion  which  is  the. people's  especial  care. 

There  is  one  point  in  which  caste  forms  a  singular  difficulty 
in  our  way  which  has  not  yet  been  brought  sufficiently  home 
to  us.  The  comparatively  fair  treatment  which  is  now  ex- 
tended to  the  low-caste  and  no-caste  men  is  itself  an  insult  to 
the  high-caste  nobility;  and  while  the  no-caste  men  care 
little  how  we  treat  them  provided  we  pay  them  well,  and  the 
bunnya,  or  shop-keeping  class,  encouraged  by  the  improve- 
ment, cry  out  loudly  that  the  Government  wrongs  them  in 
not  treating  them  as  Europeans,  the  high-caste  men  are 
equally  disgusted  with  our  good  treatment  both  of  middle- 
class  and  inferior  Hindoos.  These  things  are  stumbling- 
blocks  in  our  way  chiefly  because  no  amount  of  acquaintance 


Caste.  423 

with  the  various  phases  of  caste  feeling  is  sufficient  to  bring 
homo  its  importance  to  Englishmen.  The  Indian  is  essen- 
tially the  caste  man,  the  Saxon  as  characteristically  the  no- 
caste  man,  and  it  is  difficult  to  produce  a  mutual  understand- 
ing. Just  as  in  England  the  people  are  too  democratic  for 
the  Government,  in  India  the  Government  is  too  democratic 
for  the  people. 

Although  caste  has  hitherto  been  but  little  shaken,  there 
are  forces  at  work  which  must  in  time  produce  the  most  grave 
results.  The  return  to  their  homes  of  natives  who  have  emi- 
grated and  worked  at  sugar-planting  in  Mauritius  and  coffee- 
growing  in  Ceylon,  mixing  with  negroes  and  with  Europeans, 
will  gradually  aid  in  the  subversion  of  caste  distinctions,  and 
the  Parsees  will  give  their  help  toward  the  creation  of  a  health- 
ier feeling.  The  young  men  of  the  merchant-class — who  are 
all  pure  deists — set  an  example  of  doing  away  with  caste 
distinctions  which  will  gradually  affect  the  whole  population 
of  the  towns ;  railways  will  act  upon  the  laborers  and  ag- 
riculturist ;  as  closer  intercourse  with  Europe  will  possibly 
go  hand  in  hand  with  universal  instruction  in  the  English 
tongue,  and  the  indirect  results  of  Christian  teaching  will 
continue  to  be,  as  they  have  been,  great. 

The  positive  results  of  missionary  work  in  India  have  hith- 
erto been  small.  Taking  the  census  as  a  guide,  in  the  dis- 
trict of  Mooradabad  we  find  but  107  Christians  in  1,100,000 
people ;  in  Budaon  64  "  Christians,  Europeans,  and  Eurasians" 
(half-castes),  out  of  900,000  people;  in  Bareilly  137  native 
Christians  in  a  million  and  a  half  of  people  ;  in  Shajehanpoor 
98  in  a  million  people ;  in  Turrai  none  in  a  million  people ; 
in  Etah  no  native  Christians,  and  only  twenty  Europeans  to 
614,000  people  ;  in  the  Banda  district  thirteen  native  Chris- 
tians out  of  three-quarters  of  a  million  of  people  ;  in  Goruck- 
poor  100  native  Christians  out  of  three  and  a  half  millions  of 
people.  Not  to  multiply  instances,  this  proportion  is  pre- 
served throughout  the  whole  of  the  districts,  and  the  native 
Christians  in  the  North-west  are  proved  to  form  but  an  in- 
significant fraction  of  the  population. 

The  number  of  native  Christians  in  India  is  extremely 
small.  Twenty-three  societies,  having  three  hundred  Protest- 
ant missionary  stations,  more  than  three  hundred  native  mis- 


424  Greater  Britain. 

sionary  churches,  and  five  hundred  European  preachers,  cost- 
ing -with  their  assistants  two  hundred  thousand  pounds  a  year, 
profess  to  show  only  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  converts, 
of  whom  one-seventh  are  communicants.  The  majority  of 
the  converts  who  are  not  communicants  are  converts  only 
upon  paper,  and  it  may  be  said  that  of  real  native  non-Catho- 
lic Christians  there  are  not  in  India  more  than  40,000,  of 
whom  half  are  to  be  found  among  the  devil-worshipers  of 
Madras.  The  so-called  "aboriginal"  hill-tribes,  having  no 
elaborate  religious  system  of  their  own,  are  not  tied  down  to 
the  creed  of  their  birth  in  the  same  way  as  are  Mohammedans 
and  Hindoos,  among  whom  our  missionaries  make  no  way 
whatever.  The  native  Protestant's  position  is  a  fearful  one, 
except  in  such  a  city  as  Madras,  for  he  wholly  loses  caste, 
and  becomes  an  outlaw  from  his  people.  The  native  Catholic 
continues  to  be  a  caste  man,  and  sometimes  an  idol-worship- 
er, and  the  priests  have  made  a  million  converts  in  Southern 
India. 

Besides  revealing  the  fewness  of  the  native  Christians,  the 
North-western  census  has  shown  us  plainly  the  weakness  of 
the  Europeans.  In  the  district  of  Mooradabad  1,100,000  peo- 
ple are  ruled  by  thirty-eight  Europeans.  In  many  places 
two  Europeans  watch  over  200,000  people.  The  Eurasians 
are  about  as  numerous  as  the  Europeans,  to  which  class  they 
may  for  some  purposes  be  regarded  as  belonging,  for  the  na- 
tives reject  their  society,  and  refuse  them  a  place  in  every 
caste.  The  Eurasians  are  a  much-despised  race,  the  butt  of 
every  Indian  story,  but  as  a  community  they  are  not  to  be 
ranked  high.  That  they  should  be  ill-educated,  vain,  and 
cringing,  is  perhaps  only  what  we  might  expect  of  persons 
placed  in  their  difficult  position  ;  nevertheless  that  they  are 
so  tends  to  lessen,  in  spite  of  our  better  feelings,  the  pity  that 
we  should  otherwise  extend  toward  them. 

The  census  had  not  only  its  revelations,  but  its  results. 
One  effect  of  the  census-taking  is  to.  check  the  practice  of  in- 
fanticide, by  pointing  out  to  the  notice  of  our  officers  the 
castes  and  the  districts  in  which  it  exists.  The  deaths  of  three 
or  four  hundred  children  are  credited  to  the  wolves  in  the 
Umritsur  district  of  the  Punjaub  alone,  but  it  is  remarked 
that  the  "  wolves  "  pick  out  the  female  infants.     The  great 


Mohammedan  Cities.  425 

disproportion  of  the  sexes  is  itself  partly  to  be  explained  as 
the  result  of  infanticide. 

One  weighty  drawback  to  our  influence  upon  Hindoo  mor- 
als is  that  in  the  case  of  many  abuses  we  legislate  without 
effect,  our  laws  being  evaded  where  they  are  outwardly  obey- 
ed. The  practice  of  infanticide  exists  in  all  parts  of  India, 
but  especially  in  Rajpootana,  and  the  girls  are  killed  chiefly 
in  order  to  save  the  cost  of  marrying  them — or,  rather,  of  buy- 
ing husbands  for  them.  Now  we  have  "  suppressed"  infanti- 
cide— which  means  that  children  are  smothered  or  starved, 
instead  of  being  exposed.  It  is  no  easy  task  to  bring  about 
reforms  in  the  customs  of  the  people  of  India. 

The  many  improvements  in  the  moral  condition  of  the  peo- 
ple which  the  census  chronicles  are  steps  in  a  great  march. 
Those  who  have  known  India  long  are  aware  that  a  remark- 
able change  has  come  over  the  country  in  the  last  few  years. 
Small  as  have  been  the  positive  visible  results  of  Christian 
teaching,  the  indirect  effects  have  been  enormous.  Among 
the  Sikhs  and  Marattas  a  spirit  of  reflection,  of  earnest 
thought,  unusual  in  natives,  has  been  aroused  ;  in  Bengal  it 
lias  taken  the  form  of  pure  deism,  but  then  Bengal  is  not  In- 
dia. The  spirit  rather  than  the  doctrinal  teaching  of  Chris- 
tianity has  been  imbibed :  a  love  of  truth  appeals  more  to 
the  feelings  of  the  upright  natives  than  do  the  whole  of  the 
nine-and-thirty  Articles.  Here,  as  elseAvhere,  the  natives  look 
to  deeds,  not  words ;  the  example  of  a  Frere  is  worth  the 
teaching  of  a  hundred  missionaries,  painstaking  and  earnest 
though  they  be. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

MOUAMMEDAK  CITIES. 


Through  Mirzapore,  Allahabad,  and  Futtehpore  I  passed 
on  to  Cawnpore,  spending  but  little  time  at  Allahabad  ;  for 
though  the  city  is  strategically  important  there  is  in  it  but  lit- 
tle to  be  seen.  Like  all  spots  of  the  confluence  of  rivers,  Alla- 
habad is  sacred  with  the  Hindoos,  for  it  stands,  they  say,  at 
the  meeting-point  of  no  less  than  three  great  streams — the 
Ganges,  the  Jumna,  and  a  river  of  the  spirit-land.     To  us  poor 


426  Greater  Britain. 

pagans  the  third  stream  is  invisible  ;  not  so  to  the  faithful. 
Catching  a  glimpse  of  Marochetti's  statue  at  the  Cawnpore 
■well,  as  I  hurried  through  that  city,  I  diverged  from  the  East 
Indian  Railway,  and  took  dawk-carriage  to  Lucknow. 

As  compared  with  other  Indian  cities,  the  capital  ofOude 
is  a  town  to  be  seen  in  driving  rather  than  in  walking ;  the 
general  effects  are  superior  in  charm  and  beauty  to  the  de- 
tails, and  the  vast  size  of  the  city  makes  mere  sight-seeing  a 
work  of  difficulty.  More  populous  before  1857  than  either 
Calcutta  or  Bombay,  it  is  still  twice  as  large  as  Liverpool. 
Not  only,  however,  is  Lucknow  the  most  perfect  of  the  mod- 
ern or  Italianized  Oriental  towns,  but  there  are  in  it  several 
buildings  that  have  each  the  charm  of  an  architecture  special 
to  itself.  Ol  these  the  Martiniere  is  the  most  singular,  and  it 
looks  like  what  it  is — the  freak  of  a  wealthy  madman.  Its 
builder  was  General  Martine,  a  Frenchman  in  the  service  of 
the  Kings  of  Oude.  Not  far  behind  the  Martiniere  is  the 
Dilkousha  —  a  fantastic  specimen  of  an  Oriental  hunting- 
lodge.  The  ordinary  show-building  of  the  place,  the  Kaiscr- 
bagh,  or  Palace  of  the  Kings  of  Oude,  is  a  paltry  place  enough, 
but  there  is  a  certain  grandeur  in  the  view  of  the  great  Im- 
aumbara  and  the  Hooseinabad  from  a  point  whence  the  two 
piles  form  to  the  eye  but  one.  The  gi'eat  Imaumbara  suffer- 
ed terribly  in  1858  from  the  wanton  destruction  which  our 
troops  committed  everywhere  during  the  war  of  the  mutiny. 
Had  they  confined  themselves  to  outrages  such  as  these,  how- 
ever, but  little  could  have  been  said  against  the  conduct  of 
the  war.  There  is  too  much  fear  that  the  English,  unless 
held  in  check,  exhibit  a  singularly  strong  disposition  toward 
cruelty  wherever  they  have  a  weak  enem)'  to  meet. 

The  stories  of  the  Indian  mutiny  and  of  the  Jamaica  riot 
are  but  two  out  of  many — two  that  we  happen  to  have  heard  : 
but  the  Persian  war  in  1857  and  the  last  of  the  Chinese  cam- 
paigns are  not  without  their  records  of  deliberate  barbarity 
and  wrong.  From  the  first  officer  of  one  of  the  Peninsular 
and  Oriental  steamers,  which  was  employed  in  carrying  troops 
up  the  Euphrates  during  the  Persian  war,  I  heard  a  story  that 
is  the  type  of  many  such.  A  Persian  drummer-boy  of  about 
ten  years  old  was  seen  bathing  from  the  bank  one  morning 
by  the  officers  on  deck.     Bets  were  made  as  to  the  chance  of 


Mohammedan  Cities.  427 

hitting  him  with  an  Enfield  rifle,  and  one  of  the  betters  killed 
him  at  the  first  shot. 

It  is  not  only  in  war-time  that  our  cruelty  comes  out ;  it 
is  often  seen  in  trifles  during  peace.  Even  a  traveller  in- 
deed becomes  so  soon  used  to  see  the  natives  wronged  in 
every  Avay  by  people  of  quiet  manner  and  apparent  kindness 
of  disposition,  that  he  ceases  to  record  the  cases.  In  Ma- 
dras Roads,  for  instance,  I  saw  a  fruit-seller  hand  up  some 
limes  to  a  lower-deck  port  just  as  Ave  were  weighing  anchor. 
Three  Anglo-Indians  (men  who  had  been  out  before)  asked 
in  chorus  "How  much?"  "One-quarter  rupee."  "Too 
much."  And,  without  more  ado,  paying  nothing,  they  pelted 
the  man  with  his  own  limes,  of  which  he  lost  more  than  half. 
In  Ceylon,  near  Bentotte  rest-house,  a  native  child  offered  a 
handsome  cowrie  (of  a  kind  worth  in  Australia  about  five 
shillings,  and  certainly  worth  something  in  Ceylon)  to  the 
child  of  a  Mauritius  coffee-planter  who  was  travelling  with 
\is  to  Columbo,  himself  an  old  Indian  officer.  The  white 
child  took  it,  and  would  not  give  it  up.  The  native  child 
cried  for  money,  or  to  have  his  shell  back,  but  the  mother  of 
the  white  child  exclaimed,  "  You  be  hanged  ;  it's  worth  noth- 
ing ;"  and  off  came  the  shell  with  us  in  the  dawk.  Such 
are  the  small  but  galling  wrongs  inflicted  daily  upon  the 
Indian  natives.  It  was  a  maxim  of  the  Portuguese  Jesuits 
that  men  who  live  long  among  Asiatics  seldom  fail  to  learn 
their  vices,  but  our  older  civilians  treat  the  natives  with  strict 
justice,  and  Anglo-Indian  ladies  who  have  been  reared  in  the 
country  are  generally  kind  to  their  own  servants,  if  some- 
what harsh  toward  other  natives.  It  is  those  who  have  been 
in  the  country  from  five  to  ten  years,  and  especially  soldiers, 
who  treat  the  natives  badly.  Such  men  I  have  heard  exclaim 
that  the  new  penal  code  has  revolutionized  the  country. 
"  Formerly,"  they  say, "  you  used  to  send  a  man  to  a  police 

officer  or  a  magistrate  with  a  note  : — '  My  dear ,  Please 

give  the  bearer  twenty  lashes.'  But  now  the  magistrates  are 
afraid  to  act,  and  your  servant  can  have  you  fined  for  beat- 
ing him."  In  spite  of  the  lamentations  of  Anglo-Indians  over 
the  good  old  days,  I  noticed  in  all  the  hotels  in  India  the  sig- 
nificant notice,  "Gentlemen  are  earnestly  requested  not  to 
strike  the  servants." 


428  Greater  Britain. 

The  jokes  of  a  people  against  themselves  are  not  worth 
much,  but  may  be  taken  in  aid  of  other  evidence.  The  two  fa- 
vorite Anglo-Indian  stories  fire  that  of  the  native  who,  being 
asked  his  religion,  said, "  Me  Christian — me  get  drunk  like 
massa  ;"  and  that  of  the  young  officer  who,  learning  Hindos- 
tanee  in  1858, had  the  difference  between  the  negative  "no" 
and  the  particle  "  ne  "  explained  to  him  by  the  moonshec, 
when  he  exclaimed :  "  Dear  me  !  I  hanged  lots  of  natives 
last  year  for  admitting  that  they  had  not  been  in  their  vil- 
lages for  months.  I  suppose  they  meant  to  say  that  they 
had  not  left  their  villages  for  months."  It  is  certain  that  in 
the  suppression  of  the  mutiny  hundreds  of  natives  were  hang- 
ed by  queen's  officers  who,  unable  to  speak  a  word  of  any 
native  language,  could  neither  understand  evidence  nor  de- 
fense. 

It  is  in  India,  when  listening  to  a  mess-table  conversation 
on  the  subject  of  looting  that  we  begin  to  remember  our  de- 
scent from  Scandinavian  sea-king  robbers.  Centuries  of  ed- 
ucation have  not  purified  the  blood;  our  men  in  India  can 
hardly  set  eyes  upon  a  native  prince  or  a  Hindoo*  palace  be- 
fore they  cry, "  What  a  place  to  break  up  /"  "  What  a  fellow 
to  loot/"  When  I  said  to  an  officer  who  had  been  stationed 
at  Secrole  in  the  early  days  of  the  mutiny,  "  I  suppose  you 
were  afraid  that  the  Benares  people  would  have  attacked 
you,"  his  answer  was,  "  Well,  for  my  part,  I  rather  hoped 
they  would,  because  then  we  should  have  thrashed  them, 
and  looted  the  city.  It  hadn't  been  looted  for  two  hundred 
years." 

Those  who  doubt  that  Indian  military  service  makes  sol- 
diers careless  of  men's  lives,  reckless  as  to  the  rights  of  prop- 
erty, and  disregardful  of  human  dignity,  can  hardly  remem- 
ber the  letters  Avhich  reached  home  in  1857,  in  which  an  of- 
ficer in  high  command  during  the  march  upon  Cawnpore  re- 
ported, "  Good  bag  to-day ;  polished  off rebels ;"  it  being 

borne  in  mind  that  the  "  rebels  "  thus  hanged  or  blown  from 
guns  were  not  taken  in  arms,  but  villagers  apprehended  "  on 
suspicion."  During  this  march  atrocities  were  committed 
in  the  burning  of  villages  and  massacre  of  innocent  inhab- 
itants at  which  Mohammed  Togluk  himself  would  have  stood 
ashamed,  and  it  would  be  to  contradict  all  history  to  assert 


Mohammedan  Cities.  429 

that  a  succession  of  such  deeds  would  not  prove  fatal  to  our 
liberties  at  home. 

The  European  officers  of  native  regiments,  and  many  offi- 
cers formerly  in  the  Company's  service,  habitually  show 
great  kindness  to  the  natives,  but  it  is  the  benevolent  kind- 
ness of  the  master  for  a  favorite  slave,  of  the  superior  for 
men  immeasurably  beneath  him ;  there  is  little  of  the  feeling 
which  a  common  citizenshij)  should  bestow,  little  of  that 
equality  of  man  and  man  which  Christianity  would  seem  to 
teach,  and  which  our  Indian  Government  has  for  some  years 
lav  o  red. 

At  Lucknow  I  saw  the  Residency,  and  at  Cawnpore,  on 
my  return  to  the  East  Indian  Ilailway,  the  intrenchments 
which  were,  each  of  them,  the  scene  in  1857  of  those  de- 
fenses against  the  mutineers  generally  styled  "  glorious  "  or 
"  heroic,"  though  made  by  men  fighting  with  ropes  about 
their  necks.  The  successful  defenses  of  the  fort  at  Arrah 
and  of  the  Lucknow  Residency  were  rather  testimonies  to 
the  wonderful  fighting  powers  of  the  English  than  to  their 
courage — for  cowards  would  fight  when  the  alternative  was, 
fight  or  die.  As  far  as  Oude  was  concerned,  the  "  rebellion  " 
of  1857  seems  to  have  been  rather  a  war  than  a  mutiny; 
but  the  habits  of  the  native  princes  would  probably  have 
led.  them  to  have  acted,  as  treacherously  at  Lucknow  in  the 
ease  of  a  surrender  as  did  the  Nana  at  Cawnpore,  and  our 
officers  wisely  determined  that  in  no  event  would  they  treat 
for  terms.  What  is  to  be  regretted  is  that  we  as  conquerors 
should  have  shown  the  Oude  insurgents  no  more  mercy  than 
they  would,  have  shown  to  us,  and  that  we  should  have 
made  use  of  the  pretext  that  the  rising  was  a  mere  mutiny 
of  our  native  troops  as  an  excuse  for  hanging  in  cold  blood 
the  agriculturists  of  Oude.  Whatever  the  duplicity  of  their 
rulers,  whatever  the  provocation  to  annexation  may  have 
been,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  revolution  in  the  land- 
laws  set  on  foot  by  us  resulted  in  the  offer  of  a  career  as  na- 
tive policemen  or  railway  ticket-clerks  to  men  whose  ances- 
tors were  warriors  and  knights  when  ours  wore  woad  ;  and 
we  are  responsible  before  mankind,  for  having  treated  as 
flagrant  treason  and  mutiny  a  legitimate  Avar  on  the  part  of 
the  nobility  of  Oude.     In  the  official  papers  of  the  Govern- 


430  Greater  Britain'. 

ment  of  the  North-Avest  Provinces  the  so-called  "mutiny"  is 
styled  more  properly  "a  grievous  civil  Avar." 

There  is  much  reason  to  fear,  not  that  the  mutiny  will  he 
too  long  remembered,  but  that  it  will  be  too  soon  forgotten. 
Ten  years  ago  Monghyr  was  an  ash-heap,  Cawnpore  a  name 
of  horror,  Delhi  a  stronghold  of  armed  rebels,  yet  now  Ave 
can  travel  Avithout  change  of  cars  through  peaceful  and  pros- 
perous Monghyr  and  Cawnpore — a  thousand  and  twenty 
miles — in  forty  hours,  and  find  at  the  end  of  our  journey 
that  shaded  boulevards  have  already  taken  the  place  of  the 
Avails  of  Delhi. 

Quitting  the  main  line  of  the  East  India  Railway  at  Toon- 
dla  Junction,  I  passed  over  a  newly-made  branch  road  to 
Agra.  The  line  was  but  lately  opened,  and  birds  Avithout 
number  sat  upon  the  telegraph-posts,  and  were  seemingly 
too  astonished  to  fly  aAvay  from  the  train,  while  on  the  open 
barrens  herds  of  Indian  anteloj^es  grazed  fearlessly,  and  took 
no  notice  of  us  Avhcn  Ave  passed. 

Long  before  avc  entered  Akbarabad,  as  the  city  should  be 
called,  by  the  great  hcav  bridge  across  the  Jumna,  I  had 
sighted  in  the  far  distance  the  majestic,  shining  dome  of 
the  famed  Taj  Mahal;  but  Avhen  arrived  Avithin  the  city  I 
first  visited  the  citadel  and  ramparts.  The  fort  and  palace 
of  Akbar  are  the  Moslem  creed  in  stone.  Without — turned 
toward  the  unbeliever  and  the  foe  —  the  far-famed  triple 
Avails,  froAvning  one  above  the  other  Avith  the  froAvn  that  a 
hill  fanatic  Avears  before  he  strikes  the  infidel ;  within  is  the 
secure  paradise  of  the  believing  "  Emperor  of  the  World  " — 
delicious  fountains  pouring  into  basins  of  the  whitest  marble, 
beds  of  rose  and  myrtle,  balconies  and  pavilions  ;  part  of  the 
zenana,  or  Avomen's  Aving,  overhanging  the  river,  and  com- 
manding the  distant  snow-dome  of  the  Taj.  Within,  too, 
the  "Motee  Musjid" — "Pearl  of  Mosques"  in  fact  as  wrell  as 
name — a  marble-cloistered  court,  to  which  an  angel  architect 
could  not  add  a  stone,  nor  snatch  one  from  it  Avithout  spoil- 
ing all.  These  for  believers  ;  for  non-believers  the  grim  old 
Saracenic  "Hall  of  the  Seat  of  Judgment."  The  palace,  ex- 
cept the  mosque,  AAThich  is  purity  itself,  is  overlaid  with  a 
crust  of  gems.  There  is  one  famed  chamber — a  woman's 
bath-house — the  roof  and  sides  of  which  are  covered  with 


M  O II  A  M  SI  E  I  >  A  N     C  I T I E  S .  43 1 

tiny  silver-mounted  mirrors,  placed  at  such  angles  as  to  re- 
flect to  infinity  the  figures  <>t*  those  who  stand  within  the 
hath ;  and  a  court  is  near  at  hand,  paved  with  marble  squares 
in  black  and  white,  over  which  Akbar  and  his  vizier  used  to 
sit  and  gravely  play  at  draughts  with  dancing- girls  for 
k"  pieces." 

On  the  river-bank,  a  mile  from  Akbar's  palace,  in  the  cen- 
tre of  a  vast  garden  entered  through  the  noblest  gateways 
in  the  world,  stands  the  Taj  Mahal,  a  terrace  rising  in  daz- 
zling whiteness  from  a  black  mass  of  cypresses,  and  bearing 
four  lofty,  delicate  miliars,  and  the  central  pile  that  gleams 
like  an  Alp  against  the  deep-blue  sky — minars,  terrace,  tomb, 
all  of  spotless  marble,  and  faultless  shape.  Its  Persian  build- 
ers named  the  Taj  "  the  palace  floating  in  the  air." 

Out  of  the  fierce  heat  and  blazing  sunlight  you  enter  into 
chill  and  darkness,  but  soon  begin  to  see  the  hollow  dome 
growing  into  form  above  your  head,  and  the  tomb  itself,  that 
of  Noor  Mahal,  the  favorite  queen  of  Shah  Jehan,  before  you, 
and  beside  it  her  husband's  humbler  grave.  Though  within 
and  without  the  Taj  is  white,  still  here  you  find  the  walls 
profusely  jewelled,  and  the  purity  retained.  Flowers  are 
pictured  on  every  block  in  mosaic  of  cinnamon-stone,  carnel- 
ian,  turquoise,  amethyst,  and  emerald  ;  the  corridors  contain 
the  whole  Koran,  inlaid  in  jet-black  stone,  yet  the  interior  as 
a  whole  exceeds  in  chastity  the  spotlessness  of  the  outer 
dome.  Oriental,  it  is  not  barbaric,  and  a  sweet  melancholy 
is  the  effect  the  Taj  produces  on  the  mind  when  seen  by 
day ;  in  the  still  moonlight  the  form  is  too  mysterious  to  be 
touching. 

In  a  Persian  manuscript  there  still  remains  a  catalogue  of 
the  prices  of  the  gems  made  use  of  in  the  building  of  the  Taj, 
and  of  the  places  from  which  they  came.  Among  those 
named  are  coral  from  Arabia,  sapphires  from  Moldavia,  ame- 
thysts from  Persia,  crystal  from  China,  turquoises  from  Thi- 
bet, diamonds  from  Bundelcund,  and  lapis-lazuli  from  Ceylon. 
The  stones  were  presents  or  tribute  to  the  Emperor,  and.  the 
master-masons  came  mostly  from  Constantinople  and  Bagdad 
— a  fact  which  should  be  remembered  when  we  are  discuss- 
ing the  intellectual  capacity  of  the  Bengal  Hindoos.  That  a 
people  who  paint  their  cows  pink  with  green  spots,  and  their 


432  Greater  Britain. 

horses  orange  or  bright  red,  should  be  the  authors  of  the 
Pearl  Mosque  and  the  Taj,  would  be  too  wonderful  for  our 
belief,  but  the  Mohammedan  conquerors  brought  with  them 
the  chosen  artists  of  the  Moslem  world.  The  contrast  be- 
tween  the  Taj  and  the  Monkey  Temple  at  Benares  reminds 
one  of  that  between  a  Cashmere  and  a  Norwich  shawl. 

It  is  not  at  Agra  alone  that  we  meet  the  works  of  Mogul 
Emperors.  Much  as  we  have  ourselves  done  in  building 
roads  and  bridges,  there  are  many  parts  of  Upper  India  where 
the  traces  of  the  Moslem  are  still  more  numerous  than  are  at 
present  those  of  the  later  conquerors  of  the  unfortunate  Hin- 
doos. Mosques,  forts,  conduits,  bridges,  gardens — all  the 
works  of  the  Moguls  are  both  solid  and  magnificent,  and  it 
was  with  almost  reverential  feelings  that  I  made  my  pilgrim- 
age to  the  tomb  at  Secundra  of  the  great  Emperor  Akbar, 
grandfather  of  Shah  Jehan,  son  of  Hoomayoon,  and  founder 
of  Agra  city. 

It  is  to  be  remarked  that  the  Mohammedans  in  India 
make  a  considerable  show  for  their  small  numbers.  Of  the 
great  cities  of  India  the  three  Presidency  towns  are  English  ; 
and  the  three  gigantic  cities  of  Delhi,  Agra,  and  Lucknow 
chiefly  Mohammedan.  Benares  alone  is  a  Hindoo  city,  and 
even  in  Benares  the  Mohammedans  have  their  temples.  All 
the  great  buildings  of  India  are  Mohammedan ;  so  are  all  the 
great  works  that  are  not  English.  Yet  even  in  the  Agra  dis- 
trict the  Mohammedans  are  only  one-twelfth  of  the  popula- 
tion, but  they  live  chiefly  in  the  towns. 

The  history  of  the  Mogul  Empire  of  India  from  the  time  of 
the  conquest  of  the  older  empire  by  Tamerlane  in  the  four- 
teenth century,  and  the  forced  conversion  to  Mohammedan- 
ism of  a  vast  number  of  Hindoos,  and  that  of  Akbar's  splendor 
and  enormous  power  down  to  the  transportation  of  the  last 
Emperor  in  1857  to  Rangoon,  and  the  shooting  of  his  sons  in  a 
dry  ditch  by  Captain  Hodson,  is  one  for  us  to  ponder  care- 
fully. Those  who  know  what  we  have  done  in  India  say  that 
even  in  our  codes — and  they  are  allowed  to  be  our  best  claim 
to  the  world's  applause — we  fall  short  of  Akbar's  standard. 

Delhi,  the  work  of  Shah  Jehan,  founder  of  the  Taj  and  the 
Pearl  Mosque,  was  built  by  himself  in  a  wilderness,  as  was 
Agra  by  the  Emperor  Akbar.     We  who  have  seen  the  time 


Simla.  483 

that  lias  passed  since  its  foundation  by  Washington  before 
the  capital  of  the  United  States  has  grown  out  of  the  village 
shape,  can  not  deny  that  the  Mogul  emperors,  if  they  were 
despots,  were  at  least  tyrants  possessed  of  imperial  energy. 
Akbar  built  Agra  twenty  or  thirty  miles  from  Futtehpore 
Sikri,  his  former  capital,  but  Jehan  had  the  harder  task  of 
forcing  his  people  to  quit  an  earlier  site  not  five  miles  from 
modern  Delhi,  while  Akbar  merely  moved  his  palace,  and  let 
the  people  follow. 

Delhi  suffered  so  much  at  our  hands  during  the  storm  in 
1857,  and  has  suffered  so  much  since  in  the  way  of  Napole- 
onic boulevards,  intended  to  prevent  the  necessity  of  storm- 
ing it  again,  that  it  must  bo  much  changed  from  what  it  was 
before  the  war.  The  walls  which  surround  the  whole  city 
are  nearly  as  grand  as  those  of  the  fort  at  Agra,  and  the  gate 
towers  are  very  Gibraltars  of  brick  and  stone,  as  we  found 
to  our  cost  when  Ave  battered  the  Cashmere  Gate  in  1857. 
The  palace  and  the  Motee  Musjid  are  extremely  fine,  but  in- 
ferior to  their  namesakes  at  Agra  ;  and  the  Jumna  Musjid — 
reputed  the  most  beautiful  as  it  is  the  largest  mosque  in  the 
world — impressed  me  only  by  its  size.  The  view,  however, 
from  its  minars  is  one  of  the  whole  North-west.  The  vast 
city  becomes  an  ant-heap,  and  you  instinctively  peer  out  into 
space,  and  try  to  discern  the  sea  toward  Calcutta  or  Bom- 
bay. 

The  historical  memories  that  attach  to  Delhi  differ  from 
those  that  we  associate  with  the  name  of  Agra.  There  is 
little  pleasure  in  the  contemplation  of  the  zenana,  where  the 
miserable  old  man,  the  last  of  the  Moguls,  dawdled  away  his 
years. 


CHAPTER  Vn. 

SIMLA. 

After  visiting  Nicholson's  tomb  at  the  Cashmere  Gate 
I  entered  my  one-horse  dawk — the  regulation  carriage  of 
India — and  set  off  for  Kurnaul  and  Simla,  passing  between 
the  sand-hills,  gravel-pits,  and  ruined  mosques  through  which 
the  rebel  cavalry  made  their  famous  sortie  upon  our  camp. 

T 


4:34:  Greater  Britain. 

It  was  evening  when  we  started,  and  as  the  dawk-gharrees  are 
so  arranged  that  you  can  lie  with  comfort  at  full  length,  but 
can  not  sit  without  misery,  I  brought  my  canvas  bag  into 
service  as  a  pillow,  and  was  soon  asleep. 

When  I  woke  we  had  stopped;  and  when  I  drew  the  slid- 
ing shutter  that  does  duty  for  door  and  window,  and  peered 
out  into  the  darkness,  I  discovered  that  there  was  no  horse 
in  the  shafts,  and  that  my  driver  and  his  horse  syce — or 
groom — were  smoking  their  hubble-bubbles  at  a  well  in  the 
company  of  a  passing  friend.  By  making  free  use  of  the 
strongest  language  that  my  dictionary  contained  I  prevailed 
upon  the  men  to  put  in  a  fresh  horse,  but  starting  was  a  dif- 
ferent matter.  The  horse  refused  to  budge  an  inch,  except 
indeed,  backward,  or  sidewise  toward  the  ditch.  Six  grooms 
came  running  from  the  stable,  and  placed  themselves  one  at 
each  wheel,  and  one  on  each  side  of  the  borse,  while  many 
boys  pushed  behind.  At  a  signal  from  the  driver,  the  four 
wheel-men  threw  their  whole  weight  on  the  spokes,  and  one 
of  the  men  at  the  horse's  head  held  up  the  obstinate  brute's 
off  fore-leg,  so  that  he  was  fairly  run  off  the  ground,  and 
forced  to  make  a  start,  which  he  did  with  a  violent  plunge, 
for  which  all  the  grooms  were,  however,  well  prepared.  As 
they  yelled  with  triumph  we  dashed  along  for  some  twenty 
yards,  then  swerved  sidewise,  and  came  to  a  dead  stop. 
Again  and  again  the  starting  process  was  repeated,  till  at 
last  the  horse  went  off  at  a  gallop,  which  carried  us  to  the 
end  of  the  stage.  This  is  the  onty  form  of  starting  known  to 
up-country  horses,  as  I  soon  found ;  but  sometimes  even  this 
ceremony  fails  to  start  the  horse,  and  twice  in  the  Delhi-to- 
Kalka  journey  Ave  lost  a  quarter  of  an  hour  over  horses,  and 
had  finally  to  get  others  from  the  stable. 

About  midnight  we  reached  a  Government  bungalow,  or 
road-side  inn,  where  I  was  to  sup,  and  five  minutes  produced 
a  chicken  curry  which,  in  spite  of  its  hardness,  was  disposed 
of  in  as  many  more.  Meanwhile  a  storm  had  come  rumbling 
and  roaring  across  the  skies,  and  when  I  went  to  the  door  to 
start,  the  bungalow-butler  and  cook  pointed  to  the  gharree, 
and  told  me  that  driver  and  horse  were  gone.  Not  wishing 
the  bungalow-men  to  discover  how  small  was  my  stock  of 
Ilindostanee,  I  paid  careful  attention  to  their  conversation, 


Simla.  435 

and  looked  up  cacli  time  that  I  heard  "  sahib,"  as  I  knew 
that  then  they  must  be  talking  about  me.  Seeing  this,  they 
seemed  to  agree  that  I  was  a  thorough  Hindostanee  scholar, 
but  too  proud  to  answer  when  they  spoke.  While  they 
were  humbly  requesting  that  I  would  bow  to  the  storm  and 
sleep  in  the  bungalow,  which  was  filled  with  twittering  spar- 
rows, waked  by  the  thunder  or  the  lights,  I  was  reading  my 
dictionary  by  the  faint  glimmer  of  the  cocoa-nut  oil-lamp,  and 
trying  to  find  out  how  I  was  to  declare  that  I  insisted  on 
going  on  at  once.  When  at  last  I  hit  upon  my  phrase  the 
storm  was  over,  and  the  butler  soon  found  both  horse  and 
driver.    After  this  adventure  my  Hindostanee  improved  fast. 

A  remarkable  niisappi'ehension  prevails  in  England  con- 
cerning the  languages  of  India.  The  natives  of  India,  we 
are  inclined  to  believe,  speak  Hindostanee,  which  is  the  lan- 
guage of  India  as  English  is  that  of  Britain.  The  truth  is, 
that  there  are  in  India  a  multitude  of  languages,  of  which 
Hindostanee  is  not  even  one.  Besides  the  great  tongues, 
Urdu,  Maratti,  and  Tamil,  there  are  dozens,  if  not  hundreds; 
of  local  languages,  and  innumerable  dialects  of  each.  Hindo- 
stanee is  a  camp  language,  which  contains  many  native 
words,  but  which  also  is  largely  composed  of  imported  Ara- 
bic and  Persian  words,  and  which  is  not  without  specimens 
of  English  and  Portuguese.  "  Saboon,"  for  soap,  is  the  lat- 
ter ;  "  glassie,"  for  a  tumbler,  and  "  istubul,"  for  a  stable,  the 
former ;  but  almost  every  common  English  phrase  and  En- 
glish word  of  command  forms  in  a  certain  measure  part  of 
the  Hindostanee  tongue.  Some  terms  have  been  ingeniously 
perverted ;  for  instance,  "  Who  comes  there  ?"  has  become 
"Hookum  dar?"  "Stand  at  ease!"  is  changed  to  "Tundel 
tis  !"  and  "Present  arms  !"  to  "  Furyunt  ram !"  The  Hindo- 
stanee name  for  a  European  lady  is  "  mem  sahib,"  a  feminine 
formed  from  "  sahib  " — lord,  or  European — by  prefixing  to  it 
the  English  servants'  "  mum,"  or  corruption  of  "  madam." 
Some  pure  Hindostanee  words  have  a  comical  sound  enough  to 
English  ears,  as  "  hookm,"  an  order,  pronounced  "hook'em;" 
"  misri,"  sugar,  which  sounds  like  "  misery ;"  "  top,"  fever ; 
"  molly,"  a  gardener  ;  and  "  dolly,"  a  bundle  of  vegetables. 

Dawk  travelling  in  the  Punjaub  is  by  no  means  unpleas- 
ant ;  by  night  you  sleep  soundly,  and  by  day  there  is  no  lack 


■i3(>  Greater  Britain. 

of  life  in  the  mere  traffic  on  the  road,  while  the  general  scene 
is  full  of  charm.  Here  and  there  are  serais,  or  corrals,  built 
by  the  Mogul  emperors  or  by  the  British  Government  for 
the  use  of  native  travellers.  Our  word  "  caravansary "  is 
properly  "  caravan-serai,"  an  inclosure  for  the  use  of  those 
travelling  in  caravans.  The  keeper  of  the  serai  supplies  wa- 
ter, provender,  and  food,  and  at  night  the  serais  along  the 
road  glow  with  the  cooking  fires  and  resound  with  the  voices 
of  thousands  of  natives,  who  when  on  journeys  never  seem  to 
sleep.  Throughout  the  plains  of  India  the  high-roads  pass 
villages,  serais,  police  stations,  and  groups  of  trees  at  almost 
equal  intervals.  The  space  between  clump  and  clump  is  gen- 
erally about  three  miles,  and  in  this  distance  you  never  see  a 
house,  so  compact  are  the  Indian  villages.  The  North-west 
Provinces  are  the  most  densely -peopled  countries  of  the 
world,  yet  between  village  and  village  you  often  see  no  trace 
of  man,  while  jackals  and  wild  blue-cows  roam  about  as  free- 
ly as  though  the  country  were  an  untrodden  wilderness. 

Each  time  you  reach  a  clump  of  banyans,  tamarind  and 
tulip  trees,  you  find  the  same  tenants  of  its  shades  :  village 
police  station,  Government  posting-stable,  and  serai  are  al- 
ways inclosed  within  its  limits.  All  the  villages  are  forti- 
fied with  lofty  Avails  of  mud  or  brick,  as  are  the  numerous  po- 
lice stations  along  the  road,  where  the  military  constabulary, 
in  their  dark-blue  tunics,  yellow  trowsers,  and  huge  puggrees 
of  bright  red,  rise  up  from  sleep  or  hookah  as  you  pass,  and, 
turning  out  with  tulwars  and  rifles,  perform  the  military  sa- 
lute— due  in  India  to  the  white  face  from  all  native  troops. 
Your  skin  here  is  your  patent  of  aristocracy  and  your  pass- 
port, all  in  one. 

It  is  not  only  by  the  police  and  troops  that  you  are  sa- 
luted: the  natives  all  salaam  to  you — except  mere  coolies, 
who  do  not  think  themselves  worthy  even  to  offer  a  salute — 
and  many  Anglo-Indians  refuse  to  return  their  bow.  Every 
Englishman  in  India  ought  to  act  as  though  he  were  an  em- 
bassador of  the  queen  and  people,  and  regulate  accordingly 
his  conduct  in  the  most  trifling  things  ;  but  too  often  the  low 
bow  and  humble  "salaam  sahib"  is  not  acknowledged  even 
by  a  curt  "  salaam." 

In  the  drier  portions  of  the  country  women  were  busy 


Simla.  437 

with  knives  digging  up  little  roots  of  grass  for  horse-food ; 
and  four  or  five  times  a  day  a  great  bugling  would  he  heard 
and  answered  by  my  driver,  while  the  mail-cart  shot  by  us 
at  full  speed.  The  astonishment  with  which  I  looked  upon 
the  Indian  plains  grew  even  stronger  as  I  advanced  up  coun- 
try. Not  only  is  bush  scarce,  and  forest  never  seen,  but 
where  there  is  jungle  it  is  of  the  thinnest  and  least  tropical 
kind.  It  would  be  harder  to  traverse,  on  horse  or  foot,  the 
thinnest  coppice  in  the  south  of  England  than  the  densest  jun- 
gle in  the  plain  country  of  all  India. 

Both  in  the  villages  and  in  the  desert  portions  of  the  road 
the  ground-squirrels  galloped  in  troops  before  the  dawk,  and 
birds  without  number  hopped  fearlessly  beside  us  as  we  pass- 
ed ;  hoopoes,  blue-jays,  and  minas  were  the  commonest,  but 
there  were  many  paddy-birds  and  graceful  golden  egrets  in 
the  lower  grounds. 

Between  Delhi  and  Kurnaul  were  many  ruins,  now  green 
with  the  pomegranate  leaf,  now  scarlet  with  the  bloom  of 
the  peacock-tree,  and  about  the  ancient  villages  acre  after 
acre  of  plantain-garden,  irrigated  by  the  conduits  of  the  Mo- 
hammedan conquerors ;  at  last  Kurnaul  itself — a  fortified 
town — seen  through  a  forest  of  date,  wild  mango,  and  banyan, 
with  patches  of  wheat  about  it,  and  strings  of  laden  camels 
winding  along  the  dusty  road.  After  a  bheestie  had  poured 
a  skinful  of  water  over  me  I  set  off  again  for  Kalka,  halting 
in  the  territory  of  the  Puttiala  Rajah  to  see  his  gardens  at 
Pinjore,  and  then  passed  on  toward  the  base  of  the  Hima- 
layan foot-hills.  The  wheat  harvest  was  in  progress  in  the 
Kalka  country,  and  the  girls,  reaping  with  the  sickle,  and 
carrying  away  the  sheaves  upon  their  heads,  bore  themselves 
gracefully,  as  Hindoo  women  ever  do,  and  formed  a  contrast 
to  the  coarse  old  land-owners  as  these  rode  past,  each  follow- 
ed by  his  pipe-bearer  and  his  retinue. 

A  Goorkha  battalion  and  a  Thibetan  goat-train  had  just 
entered  Kalka  when  I  reached  it,  and  the  confusion  was  such 
that  I  started  at  once  in  a  jampan  up  the  sides  of  the  brown 
and  desolate  hills.  A  jampan,  called  tonjon  in  Madras,  is  an 
arm-chair  in  shafts,  and  built  more  lightly  than  a  sedan  ;  it 
is  carried  at  a  short  trot  by  four  men,  while  another  four,  and 
a  mate  or  chief,  make  their  way  up  the  hills  before  you,  and 


438  Greater  Britain. 

meet  you  here  and  there  to  relieve  guard.  The  hire  of  the 
jampan  and  nine  men  is  less  than  that  of  a  pony  and  groom 
— a  curious  illustration  of  the  cheapness  of  labor  in  the  East. 
When  you  first  reach  India  this  cheapness  is  a  standing  -won- 
der. At  your  hotel  at  Calcutta  you  are  asked,  "You  -wish 
boy  pull  punkah  all  night  ?  Boy  pull  punkah  all  day  and  all 
night  for  two  annas  "  (3d).  On  some  parts  of  the  railway 
lines,  where  there  is  also  a  good  road,  the  natives  find  it 
cheaper  to  travel  by  palankeen  than  to  ride  in  a  third-class 
railway  carriage.  It  is  cheaper  in  Calcutta  to  be  carried  by 
four  men  in  a  palki  than  to  ride  in  a  "  second-class  gharry," 
or  very  bad  cab ;  and  the  streets  of  the  city  are  invariably 
watered  by  hand  by  bheesties  with  skins.  The  key  to  In- 
dian politics  l«ies  in  these  facts. 

At  Wilson's  at  Calcutta  the  rule  of  the  hotel  obliges  one 
to  hire  a  kitmutghar,  who  waits  at  table.  This  I  did  for  the 
magnificent  wage  of  lid.  a  day,  out  of  which  Cherry — the 
nearest  phonetic  spelling  of  my  man's  name — of  course  fed 
and  kept  himself.  I  will  do  him  the  justice  to  add  that  he 
managed  to  make  about  another  shilling  a  day  out  of  me, 
and  that  he  always  brought  me  small  change  in  copper,  on 
the  chance  that  I  should  give  it  him.  Small  as  seemed  these 
wages,  I  could  have  hired  him  for  one-fifth  the  rate  that  I 
have  named  had  I  been  ready  to  retain  him  in  my  service  for 
a  month  or  two.  Wages  in  India  are  somewhat  raised  by 
the  practice  of  dustooree — a  custom  by  which  every  native, 
high  or  low,  takes  toll  of  all  money  that  passes  through  his 
hands.  My  first  introduction  to  this  institution  struck  me 
forcibly,  though  afterward  I  came  to  look  upon  it  as  tranquil- 
ly as  old  Indians  do.  It  was  in  the  gardens  of  the  Taj,  where, 
to  relieve  myself  from  importunity,  I  had  bought  a  photo- 
graph of  the  dome :  a  native  servant  of  the  hotel,  who  ac- 
companied me  much  against  my  will,  and  who,  being  far 
more  ignorant  of  English  than  I  was  of  Hindostanee,  was  of 
absolutely  no  use,  I  had  at  last  succeeded  in  warning  off 
from  my  side,  but  directly  I  bought  the  photograph  for  half 
a  rupee  he  rushed  upon  the  seller,  and  claimed  one-fourth  of 
the  price,  or  two  anaas,  as  his  share,  I  having  transgressed 
his  privilege  in  buying  directly  instead  of  through  him  as  in- 
termediary.    I  remonstrated,  but  to  my  amazement  the  sell- 


Simla.  439 

cr  paid  the  money  quietly,  and  evidently  looked  on  me  as  a 
meddling  sort  of  fellow  enough  for  interfering  with  the  insti- 
tution of  dustooree.  Customs,  after  all,  arc  much  the  same 
throughout  the  world.  Our  sportsmen  follow  the  habit  of 
Confucius,  Avhose  disciples  two  or  three  thousand  years  ago 
proclaimed  that  "  he  angled,  but  did  not  use  a  net ;  he  shot, 
but  not  at  birds  perching  ;"  our  servants,  perhaps,  are  not 
altogether  innocent  of  dustorec.  However  much  wages  may 
be  supplemented  by  dustooree,  they  are  low  enough  to  allow 
of  the  keeping  of  a  tribe  of  servants  by  persons  of  moderate 
incomes.  A  small  family  at  Simla  "  require "  three  body- 
servants,  two  cooks,  one  butler,  two  grooms,  two  gardeners, 
two  messengers,  two  nurses,  two  washermen,  two  water-car- 
riers, thirteen  jampan-men,  one  sweeper,  one  lamp-cleaner,  and 
one  boy,  besides  the  European  lady's  maid,  or  thirty-five  in 
all ;  but  if  wages  were  doubled  perhaps  fewer  men  would  be 
"absolutely  needed."  At  the  house  where  I  staid  at  Simla 
ten  jampan-men  and  two  gardeners  were  supposed  to  be  con- 
tinuously employed  in  a  tiny  flower-garden  round  the  house. 
To  a  European  fresh  from  the  temperate  climates  there  is 
something  irksome  in  the  restraint  produced  by  the  constant 
presence  of  servants  in  every  corner  of  an  Indian  house.  To 
pull  off"  one's  own  socks  or  pour  out  the  water  into  the  basin 
for  one's  self  becomes  a  much-longed-for  luxury.  It  is  far 
from  pleasant  to  have  three  or  four  natives  squatting  in  front 
of  your  door,  with  nothing  to  do  unless  you  find  such  odd 
jobs  for  them  as  holding  the  heel  of  your  boot  while  you 
pull  it  on,  or  brushing  your  clothes  for  the  fourteenth  time. 

The  greater  or  less  value  of  the  smallest  coin  in  common 
use  in  a  country  is  a  rough  test  of  the  wealth  or  poverty  of 
its  inhabitants,  and  by  the  application  of  it  to  India  we  find 
that  country  poor  indeed.  At  Agra  I  had  gone  to  a  money- 
changer in  the  bazar,  and  asked  him  for  change,  in  the  cow- 
rie-shells which  do  duty  as  money,  for  an  anna,  or  Ihd.  piece. 
He  gave  me  handful  after  handful,  till  I  cried  enough.  Yet 
when  in  the  afternoon  of  the  same  day  I  had  a  performance 
on  my  threshold  of  "  Tasa-ba-tasa  " — that  singular  tune  which 
reigns  from  Java  to  the  Bosphorus,  with  Sanscrit  words  in 
Persia,  and  Malay  words  in  the  Eastern  islands — the  three 
players  seemed  grateful  for  half  a  dozen  of  the  cowries,  for 


440  Greater  Britain. 

they  treated  me  to  a  native  version  of  "  Vce  vont  gah  ham 
tall  mardkl,  vec  vont  gah  ham  tall  madid,"  by  way  of  thanks. 
Many  strange  natural  objects  pass  as  uncoined  money  in  the 
East :  tusks  in  Africa, women  in  Arabia,  human  skulls  in  Bor- 
neo; the  Red  Indians  of  America  sell  their  neighbors'  scalps 
for  money,  but  have  not  yet  reached  the  height  of  civiliza- 
tion which  would  be  denoted  by  their  keeping  them  to  use 
as  such ;  cowrie-shells,  however,  passed  as  money  in  almost 
every  ancient  trading-country  of  the  world. 

The  historical  cheapness  of  labor  in  India  has  led  to  sucli 
an  obstinate  aversion  to  all  labor-saving  expedients  that  such 
great  works  as  the  making  of  railway  embankments  and  the 
boulevard  construction  at  Delhi  are  conducted  by  the  scrap- 
ing together  of  earth  with  the  hands,  and  the  collected  pile 
is  slowly  placed  in  tiny  baskets,  much  like  strawberry  pottles, 
and  borne  away  on  women's  heads  to  its  new  destination. 
Wheel-barrows,  water-carts,  picks,  and  shovels  are  in  India  all 
unknown. 

If  on  my  road  from  Kalka  to  Simla  I  had  an  example  of 
the  cheapness  of  Indian  labor,  I  also  had  one  of  its  efficiency. 
The  coolie  who  carried  my  baggage  on  his  head  trotted  up 
the  hills  for  twenty-one  hours,  without  halting  for  more  than 
an  hour  or  two,  and  this  for  two  days'  pay. 

During  the  first  half  hour  after  leaving  Kalka  the  heat 
was  as  great  as  on  the  plains,  but  we  had  not  gone  many 
miles  before  we  came  out  of  the  heat  and  dust  into  a  new 
world,  and  an  atmosphere  every  breath  of  which  was  life.  I 
got  out,  and  walked  for  miles ;  and  when  we  halted  at  a  rest- 
house  on  the  first  plateau  I  thoroughly  enjoyed  a  cup  of  the 
mountain  tea,  and  was  still  more  pleased  at  the  sight  of  the 
first  red-coated  English  soldiers  that  I  had  seen  since  I  left 
Niagara.  The  men  were  even  attempting  bowls  and  cricket, 
so  cool  were  the  evenings  at  this  station.  There  is  grim  sat- 
ire in  the  fact  that  the  director-general  of  military  gymnas- 
tics has  his  establishment  at  Simla,  in  the  cold  of  the  snowy 
range,  and  there  invents  running  drills  and  such  like  summer 
diversions,  to  be  executed  by  the  unfortunates  in  the  plains 
below.  Bowls,  which  are  an  amusement  at  Kussoolie,  would 
in  the  hot  weather  be  death  at  Kalka,  only  ten  miles  away  ; 
but  so  short  is  the  memory  of  climate  that  you  are  no  more 


Simla.  441 

able  to  conceive  the  heat  of  the  plains  when  in  the  hills  than 
the  cold  of  the  hills  when  at  Calcutta. 

There  is  no  reason  except  a  slight  and  temporary  increase 
of  cost  to  prevent  the  whole  of  the  European  troops  in  India 
being  concentrated  in  a  few  cool  and  healthy  stations.  Pro- 
vided that  all  the  artillery  be  retained  in  the  hands  of  the 
Europeans,  almost  the  whole  of  the  English  forces  might  be 
kept  in  half  a  dozen  hill  stations,  of  which  Darjeeling  and 
Bangalore  would  be  two,  and  some  place  near  Bombay  a 
third.  It  has  been  said  that  the  men  would  be  incapable, 
through  want  of  acclimatization,  of  acting  on  the  plains  if  re- 
tained in  hill  stations  except  when  their  services  were  need- 
ed ;  but  it  is  notoriously  the  fact  that  new-comers  from  En- 
gland— that  is,  men  with  health — do  not  suffer  seriously  from 
heat  during  the  first  six  months  which  they  pass  upon  the 
plains. 

Soon  after  dark  a  terrific  thunder-storm  came  on,  the  thun- 
der rolling  round  the  valleys  and  along  the  ridges,  while  the 
rain  fell  in  short,  sharp  showers.  My  men  put  me  down  on 
the  lee-side  of  a  hut,  and  squatted  for  a  long  smoke.  The 
custom  common  to  all  the  Eastern  races  of  sitting  round  a 
fire  smoking  all  night  long  explains  the  number  and  the  ex- 
cellence of  their  tales  and  legends.  In  Europe  we  see  the 
Swedish  peasants  sitting  round  their  hearths  chatting  during 
the  long  winter  evenings:  hence  follow  naturally  the  Thor 
legends ;  our  sailors  are  with  us  the  only  men  given  to  sit- 
ting in  groups  to  talk:  they  are  noted  story-tellers.  The 
word  "  yarn  "  exemplifies  the  whole  philosophy  of  the  mat- 
ter. We  meet,  however,  here  the  eternal  difficulty  of  which 
is  cause  and  which  is  effect.  It  is  easy  to  say  that  the  long 
nights  of  Norway,  the  confined  space  of  the  ship,  making  the 
fo'castle  the  sailor's  only  lounge,  each  in  their  way  necessitate 
the  story-telling;  not  so  in  India,  not  so  in  Egypt,  in  Arabia, 
in  Persia :  there  can  here  be  no  necessity  for  men  sitting  up 
all  night  to  talk  short  of  pure  love  of  talk  for  talking's  sake. 

When  the  light  came  in  the  morning  we  were  ascending 
the  same  strangely-ribbed  hills  that  we  had  been  crossing 
by  torchlight  during  the  night,  and  were  meeting  Chinese- 
faced  Thibetans,  with  hair  done  into  many  pigtails,  who 
were  laboriously  bringing  over  the  mountain-passes  Chinese 

T  2 


442  Greater  Britain. 

goods  in  tiny  sheep-loads.  For  miles  I  journeyed  on,  up 
mountain-sides  and  down  into  ravines,  but  never  for  a  single 
moment  upon  a  level,  catching  sight  sometimes  of  portions 
of  the  Snowy  Range  itself,  far  distant,  and  half  mingled  with 
the  clouds,  till  at  last  a  huge  mountain  mass  rising  to  the 
north  and  east  blocked  out  all  view  save  that  behind  me 
over  the  sea  of  hills  that  I  had  crossed,  and  the  scene  became 
monotonously  hideous,  with  only  that  grandeur  which  huge- 
ness carries  with  it — a  view,  in  short,  that  would  be  fine  at 
sunset,  and  at  no  other  time.  The  weather,  too,  grew  damp 
and  cold — a  cruel  cold,  with  driving  rain — and  the  landscape 
was  dreariness  itself. 

Suddenly  we  crossed  the  ridge,  and  began  to  descend, 
when  the  sky  cleared,  and  I  found  myself  on  the  edge  of  the 
rhododendron  forest — tall  trees  with  darfogreen  leaves  and 
masses  of  crimson  flowers ;  ferns  of  a  hundred  different  kinds 
marking  the  beds  of  the  rivulets  that  coursed  down  through 
the  woods,  which  were  filled  with  troops  of  chattering  monk- 
eys. 

Rising  again  slightly,  I  began  to  pass  the  European  bun- 
galows, each  in  its  thicket  of  deodar,  and  few  with  flat 
ground  enough  for  more  than  half  a  rose-bed,  or  a  quarter 
of  a  croquet-ground.  On  either  side  the  ridge  was  a  deep 
valley,  with  terraced  rice-fields  five  thousand  feet  below,  and, 
in  the  distance,  on  the  one  side  the  mist-covered  plains  lit  by 
the  single  silvery  ribbon  of  the  distant  Sutlej,  on  the  other 
side  the  Snowy  Range. 

The  first  Europeans  whom  I  met  in  Simla  were  the  vice- 
roy's children  and  their  nurses,  who  formed  with  their  escort 
a  stately  procession.  First  came  a  tall  native  in  scarlet, 
then  a  jampan  Avith  a  child,  then  one  with  a  nurse  and  vice- 
regal baby,  and  so  on,  the  bearers  wearing  scarlet  and  gray. 
All  the  residents  at  Simla  have  different  uniforms  for  their 
jampanees,  some  clothing  their  men  in  red  and  green,  some 
in  purple  and  yellow,  some  in  black  and  white.  Before  reach- 
ing the  centre  of  the  town  I  had  met  several  Europeans  rid- 
ing, although  the  sun  was  still  high  and  hot,  but  before  even- 
ing a  hailstorm  came  across  the  range  and  filled  the  woods 
with  a  chilling  mist,  and  night  found  me  toasting  my  feet  at 
a  blazing  fire  in  an  Alpine  room  of  polished  pine — a  real  room, 


Simla.  443 

with  doors  and  casement ;  not  a  section  of  a  street  with  a  bed 
in  it,  as  are  the  rooms  in  the  Indian  plains.  Two  blankets 
Avere  a  luxury  in  this  "  tropical  climate  of  Simla,"  as  one  of 
our  best-informed  London  newspapers  once  called  it.  The 
fact  is  that  Simla,  which  stands  at  from  seven  to  eight  thou- 
sand feet  above  the  sea,  and  in  latitude  31°,  or  1°  north  of  the 
boundary  of  the  tropics,  has  a  climate  cold  in  every  thing 
except  its  sun,  which  is  sometimes  strong.  The  snow  lies  on 
the  ground  at  intervals  for  five  months  of  the  year;  and  dur- 
ing what  is  by  courtesy  styled  "  the  hot  weather"  cold  rains 
are  of  frequent  occurrence. 

The  climate  of  Simla  is  no  mere  matter  of  curiosity  :  it  is 
a  question  of  serious  interest  in  connection  with  the  retention 
of  our  Indian  empire.  When  the  Government  seeks  refuge 
here  from  the  Calcutta  heat  the  various  departments  are  lo- 
cated in  tiny  cottages  and  bungalows  up  on  the  mountain 
and  down  in  the  valley,  practically  as  far  from  each  other  as 
London  from  Brighton  ;  and,  moreover,  Simla  itself  is  forty 
miles  from  Kalka  by  the  shortest  path,  and  sixty  by  the  bet- 
ter bridle-path.  There  is  clearly  much  loss  of  time  in  sending 
dispatches  for  half  the  year  to  and  from  a  place  like  this,  and 
there  is  no  chance  of  the  railway  ever  coming  nearer  to  it 
than  Kalka,  even  if  it  reaches  that.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
telegraph  is  replacing  the  railway  day  by  day,  and  mount- 
ain heights  are  no  bar  to  wares.  This  poor  little,  uneven 
hill  village  lias  been  styled  the  "  Indian  Capua "  and  nick- 
named the  "  Hill  Versailles  ;"  but  so  far  from  enervating  the 
ministers  or  enfeebling  the  administration,  Simla  gives  vigor 
to  the  Government,  and  a  hearty  English  tone  to  the  State 
papers  issued  in  the  hot  months.  English  ministers  are  not 
in  London  all  the  year  long,  and  no  men,  ministers  or  not, 
could  stand  four  years'  continual  brain-work  in  Calcutta.  In 
1866,  the  first  year  of  the  removal  of  the  Government  as  a 
whole  and  publication  of  the  Gazette  at  Simla  during  the  sum- 
mer, all  the  arrears  of  work  in  all  the  oifices  were  cleared  off 
for  the  first  time  since  the  occupation  by  us  of  any  part  of 
India. 

Bengal,  the  North- west  Provinces,  and  the  Punjaub  must 
soon  be  made  into  "  governorships,"  instead  of  "  lieutenant- 
governorships,"  so  that  the  viceroy  may  be  relieved  from 


444  Greater  Britain. 

tedious  work,  and  time  saved  by  the  Northern  governors  re- 
porting straight  home,  as  do  the  Governors  of  Madras  and 
Bombay,  unless  a  system  be  adopted  under  which  all  shall 
report  to  the  viceroy.  At  all  events,  the  five  divisions  must 
be  put  upon  the  same  footing  one  with  another.  This  being 
granted,  there  is  no  conceivable  reason  for  keeping  the  vice- 
roy at  Calcutta — a  city  singularly  hot,  unhealthy,  and  out  of 
the  way.  On  our  Council  of  India  sitting  at  the.  capital,  we 
ought  to  have  natives  picked  from  all  India  for  their  honesty, 
ability,  and  discretion ;  but  so  bad  is  the  water  at  Calcutta 
that  the  city  is  deadly  to  water-drinkers ;  and  although  they 
value  the  distinction  of  a  seat  at  the  Council  moi'e  than  any 
other  honor  within  their  reach,  many  of  the  most  distinguish- 
ed natives  in  India  have  chosen  to  resign  their  places  rather 
than  pass  a  second  season  at  Calcutta. 

It  is  not  necessary  that  we  should  argue  about  Calcutta's 
disadvantages.  It  is  enough  to  say  that,  of  all  Indian  cities, 
we  have  selected  for  our  capital  the  most  distant  and  the 
most  unhealthy.  The  great  question  is,  Shall  we  have  one 
capital  or  two?  Shall  we  keep  the  viceroy  all  the  year 
round  in  a  central  but  hot  position,  such  as  Delhi,  Agra,  Al- 
lahabad, or  Jubbelpore,  or  else  at  a  less  central  but  cooler  sta- 
tion, such  as  Nassuck,  Poonah,  Bangalore,  or  Mussoorie  ?  or 
shall  we  keep  him  at  a  central  place  during  the  cool,  and  a 
hill  place  during  the  hot  weather  ?  There  can  be  but  little 
doubt  that  Simla  is  a  necessity  at  present,  but  with  a  fairly 
healthy  city,  such  as  Agra,  for  the  head-quarters  of  the  Gov- 
ernment, and  the  railway  open  to  within  a  few  miles  of  Mus- 
soorie, so  that  men  could  run  to  the  hills  in  six  or  seven  hours, 
and  even  spend  a  few  days  there  in  each  summer  month,  an 
efficient  government  could  be  maintained  in  the  plains.  We 
must  remember  that  Agra  is  now  within  twenty-three  days 
of  London ;  and  that,  with  the  Persian  Gulf  route  open,  and 
a  railway  from  Kurrachee  (the  natural  port  of  England  in 
India),  leave  for  home  would  be  a  matter  still  more  simple 
than  it  has  become  already.  With  some  such  central  town 
as  Poonah  for  the  capital,  the  Bombay  and  Madras  command- 
er-in-chiefships  could  be  abolished,  with  the  result  of  saving  a 
considerable  expense  and  greatly  increasing  the  efficiency  of 
the  Indian  army.     It  is  probable  that  Simla  will  not  continue 


Colonization.  <M5 

to  be  the  chosen  station  of  the  Government  in  the  hills.  The 
town  is  subject  to  the  ravages  of  dysentery ;  the  cost  of 
draining  it  would  be  immense,  and  the  water  supply  is  very 
limited :  the  bheesties  have  often  to  wait  wdiole  hours  for  their 
turn. 

Mussoorie  has  all  the  advantages  and  none  of  the  draw- 
backs of  Simla,  and  lies  compactly  in  ground  on  which  a 
small  city  could  be  built,  whereas  Simla  straggles  along  a 
narrow  mountain  ridge,  and  up  and  down  the  steep  sides  of 
an  Alpine  peak.  It  is  questionable,  however,  whether,  if  In- 
dia is  to  be  governed  from  at  home,  the  seat  of  Government 
should  not  be  at  Poonah,  within  reach  of  London.  The  tele- 
graph has  already  made  viceroys  of  the  ancient  kind  impos- 
sible. 

The  sunrise  view  of  the  Snowy  Range  from  my  bungalow 
wras  one  rather  strange  from  the  multitude  of  peaks  in  sight 
at  once  than  either  beautiful  or  grand.  The  desolate  ranges 
of  foot-hills  destroy  the  beauty  that  the  contrast  of  the  deo- 
dars, the  crimson  rhododendrons,  and  the  snow  would  other- 
wise produce,  and  the  height  at  wThich  you  stand  seems  to 
dwarf  the  distant  ranges  ;  but  from  one  of  the  spots  which  I 
reached  in  a  mountain  march  the  prospect  was  widely  differ- 
ent. Here  we  saw  at  once  the  sources  of  the  Jumna,  the 
Sutlej,  and  the  Ganges,  the  dazzling  peaks  of  Gungootrie,  of 
Jumnotrie,  and  of  Kamet;  while  behind  us  in  the  distant 
plains  we  could  trace  the  Sutlej  itself,  silvered  by  the  hazy 
rays  of  the  half-risen  sun.  We  had  in  sight  not  only  the 
26,000  feet  of  Kamet,  but  no  less  than  twenty  other  peaks 
of  over  20,000  feet,  snow-clad  to  their  very  basis,  while  be- 
tween us  and  the  nearest  outlying  range  wrere  valleys  from 
which  the  ear  caught  the  humble  murmur  of  fresh-risen 
streams. 


CHAPTER  VIH 

COLONIZATION. 


Connected  with  the  question  of  the  site  of  the  future  cap- 
ital is  that  of  the  possibility  of  the  colonization  by  English- 
men of  portions  of  the  Peninsula  of  India. 

Hitherto  the  attempts  at  settlement  which  have  been  made 


■±4G  Greater  Britain. 

have  been  mainly  confined  to  six  districts — Mysore,  ■where 
there  are  only  some  dozen  planters ;  the  Neilgherries  proper, 
where  coffee-planting  is  largely  carried  on;  Oude,  where 
many  Europeans  have  taken  land  as  zemindars,  and  cultivate 
a  portion  of  it,  while  they  let  out  the  remainder  to  natives  on 
the  Metayer  plan ;  Bengal,  where  indigo-planting  is  gaining 
ground ;  the  Himalayan  valleys,  and  Assam.  Settlement  in 
the  hot  plains  is  limited  by  the  fact  that  English  children 
can  not  there  be  reared,  so  to  the  hill  districts  the  discussion 
must  be  confined. 

One  of  the  commonest  of  mistakes  respecting  India  con- 
sists in  the  supposition  that  there  is  available  land  in  large 
quantities  on  the  slopes  of  the  Himalayas.  There  are  no  Him- 
alayan slopes  ;  the  country  is  all  straight  up  and  down,  and 
for  English  colonists  there  is  no  room — no  ground  that  will 
grow  any  thing  but  deodars,  and  those  only  moderately  well. 
The  hot  sun  dries  the  ground,  and  the  violent  rains  follow, 
and  cut  it  through  and  through  with  deep  channels,  in  this 
way  gradually  making  all  the  hills  both  steep  and  ribbed. 
Mysore  is  still  a  native  State,  but,  in  spite  of  this,  European 
settlement  is  increasing  year  by  year,  and  there,  as  in  the 
Neilgherries  proper,  there  is  room  for  many  coffee-planters, 
though  fever  is  not  unknown ;  but  when  India  is  carefully 
surveyed  the  only  district  that  appears  to  be  thoroughly 
suited  to  English  settlement,  as  contrasted  with  mere  plant- 
ing or  land-holding,  is  the  valley  of  Cashmere,  where  the 
race  would  probably  not  suffer  deterioration.  With  the  ex- 
ception of  Cashmere,  none  of  the  deep  mountain  valleys  are 
cool  enough  for  permanent  European  settlement.  Family 
life  is  impossible  where  there  is  no  home ;  you  can  have  no 
English  comfort,  no  English  virtues,  in  a  climate  which 
forces  your  people  to  live  out  of  doors,  or  else  in  rocking- 
chairs  or  hammocks.  Night-Avork  and  reading  are  all  but 
impossible  in  a  climate  where  multitudes  of  insects  haunt 
the  air.  In  the  Himalayan  valleys  the  hot  weather  is  terri- 
bly scorching,  and  it  lasts  for  half  the  year,  and  on  the  hill- 
sides there  is  but  little  fertile  soil. 

The  civilians  and  rulers  of  India  in  general  arc  extremely 
jealous  of  the  "  interlopers,"  as  European  settlers  are  term- 
ed;  and  although  tea  cultivation  was  ',  t  first  encouraged  by 


Colonization.  447 

the  Bengal  Government,  recent  legislation,  fair  or  unfair,  has 
almost  ruined  the  tea-planters  of  Assam.  The  native  pop- 
ulation of  that  district  is  averse  to  labor,  and  coolies  from 
a  distance  have  to  be  brought  in ;  but  the  Government  of 
India,  as  the  planters  say,  interferes  with  harsh  and  narrow 
regulations,  and  so  enormously  increases  the  cost  of  imported 
labor  as  to  ruin  the  planters,  who,  even  when  they  have  got 
their  laborers  on  the  ground,  can  not  make  them  work,  as 
there  exist  no  means  of  compelling  specific  performance  of  a 
contract  to  work.  The  remedy  known  to  the  English  law  is 
an  action  for  damages  brought  by  the  employer  against  the 
laborer,  so  with  English  obstinacy  we  declare  that  an  action 
for  damages  shall  be  the  remedy  in  Burmah  or  Assam.  A 
provision  for  attachment  of  goods  and  imprisonment  of  per- 
son of  laborers  refusing  to  perform  their  portion  of  a  contract 
to  work  was  inscribed  in  the  draft  of  the  proposed  Indian 
"  Code  of  Civil  Procedure,"  but  vetoed  by  the  authorities  at 
home. 

The  Spanish  Jesuits  themselves  were  not  more  afraid  of 
free  white  settlers  than  is  our  Bengal  Government.  An  en- 
terprising merchant  of  Calcutta  lately  obtained  a  grant  of 
vast  tracts  of  country  in  the  Sunderbunds — the  fever-haunted 
jungle  near  Calcutta — and  had  already  completed  his  ar- 
rangements for  importing  Chinese  laborers  to  cultivate  his 
acquisitions,  when  the  jealous  civilians  got  wind  of  the  affair, 
and  forced  Government  into  a  most  undignified  retreat  from 
their  agreement. 

The  secret  of  this  opposition  to  settlement  by  Europeans 
lies  partly  in  a  horror  of  "  low-caste  Englishmen,"  and  a  fear 
that  they  will  somewhat  debase  Europeans  in  native  eyes, 
but  far  more  in  the  wish  of  the  old  civilians  to  keep  India  to 
themselves  as  a  sort  of  "  happy  hunting-ground " — a  wish 
which  has  prompted  them  to  start  the  cry  of  "India  for  the 
Indians  " — which  of  course  means  India  for  the  Anglo-In- 
dians. 

Somewhat  apart  from  the  question  of  European  coloniza- 
tion, but  closely  related  to  it,  is  that  of  the  holding  by  Eu- 
ropeans of  landed  estates  in  India.  It  will  perhaps  be  con- 
ceded that  the  European  should,  on  the  one  hand,  be  allowed 
to  come  into  the  market  and  purchase  land,  or  rent  it  from  the 


448  Greater  Britain. 

Government  or  from  individuals,  on  the  same  conditions  as 
those  which  would  apply  to  natives,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  special  grants  should  not  be  made  to  Europeans  as  they 
were  by  us  in  Java  in  old  times.  In  Eastern  countries,  how* 
ever,  Government  can  hardly  he  wholly  neutral,  and,  what- 
ever the  law,  if  European  land-holders  he  encouraged,  they 
will  come;  if  discouraged,  they  will  stop  away.  From  India 
they  stop  away,  while  such  as  do  reach  Hindostan  arc  known 
in  official  circles  by  the  significant  name  of  "  interlopers." 

Under  a  healthy  social  system,  which  the  presence  of  En- 
glish planters  throughout  India,  and  the  support  which 
would  thus  be  given  to  the  unofficial  press  would  of  itself  do 
much  to  create,  the  owning  of  land  by  Europeans  could  pro- 
duce nothing  but  good.  The  danger  of  the  use  of  compul- 
sion toward  the  natives  would  not  exist,  because  in  India — 
unlike  what  is  the  case  in  Dutch  Java — the  interest  of  the 
ruling  classes  would  be  the  other  way.  If  it  be  answered 
that,  once  in  possession  of  the  land,  the  Europeans  would  get 
the  government  into  their  own  hands,  we  must  reply  that 
they  could  never  be  sufficiently  numerous  to  have  the  slight- 
est chance  of  doing  any  thing  of  the  kind.  As  we  have  seen 
in  Ceylon,  the  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  planters  to  usurp 
the  government  is  sternly  repressed  by  the  English  people 
the  moment  that  its  true  bearing  is  understood ;  and  yet 
in  Ceylon  the  planters  are  far  more  numerous  in  proportion 
to  the  population  than  they  can  ever  be  in  India,  where  the 
climate  of  the  plains  is  fatal  to  European  children,  and  where 
there  is  comparatively  little  land  upon  the  hills  ;  while  in 
Ceylon  the  coflee-tracts,  which  are  mountainous  and  healthy, 
form  a  sensible  proportion  of  the  whole  lands  of  the  island. 
It  is  true  that  the  press,  when  once  completely  in  the  plant' 
ers'  hands,  may  advocate  their  interests  at  the  expense  of 
those  of  the  natives,  but  in  the  case  of  Queensland  we  have 
seen  that  this  is  no  protection  to  the  planters  against  the  in- 
quisitive home  eye,  which  would  be  drawn  to  India  as  it  has 
been  to  Queensland  by  the  reports  of  independent  travellers, 
and  of  interested  but  honest  missionaries. 

The  infamies  of  the  foundation  of  the  indigo-plantations 
in  Bengal,  and  of  many  of  the  tea-plantations  in  Assam,  in 
which  violence  was  freely  used  to  make  the  natives  grow  the 


Colonization.  449 

selected  crop,  and.  in  some  cases  the  land  actually  stolen 
from  its  owners,  Lave  gone  far  to  make  European  settlement 
in  India  a  by-word  among  the  friends  of  the  Hindoo,  but  it  is 
clear  that  an  efficient  police  would  suffice  to  restrain  these 
illegalities  and  hideous  wrongs.  It  might  become  advisable 
in  the  interest  of  the  natives  to  provide  that  not  only  the 
officers,  but  also  the  sub-officers  and  some  constables  of  the 
police,  should  be  Europeans  in  districts  where  the  plantations 
lay,  great  care  being  taken  to  select  honest  and  fearless  men, 
and  to  keep  a  strict  Avatch  on  their  conduct. 

The  two  great  securities  against  that  further  degradation 
of  the  natives  which  has  been  foretold  as  a  result  of  the  ex- 
pected influx  of  Europeans  are  the  general  teaching  of  the 
English  language,  and  the  grant  of  pei*fect  freedom  of  action 
(the  Government  standing  aloof)  to  missionaries  of  every 
creed  under  heaven.  The  bestowal  of  the  English  tongue 
upon  the  natives  will  give  the  local  newspapers  a  larger  cir- 
culation among  them  than  among  the  planter-classes,  and  so, 
by  the  powerful  motive  of  self-interest,  force  them  to  the  side 
of  liberty  ;  while  the  honesty  of  some  of  the  missionaries  and 
the  interest  of  others  will  certainly  place  the  majority  of  the 
religious  bodies  on  the  side  of  freedom.  It  is  needless  to  say 
that  the  success  of  a  policy  which  would  be  opposed  by  the 
local  press  and  at  the  same  time  by  the  chief  English  Church- 
es is  not  an  eventuality  about  which  we  need  give  ourselves 
concern,  and  it  is  therefore  probable  that  on  the  whole  the 
encouragement  of  European  settlement  upon  the  plains  would 
be  conducive  to  the  welfare  of  the  native  race. 

That  settlement  or  colonization  would  make  our  tenure  of 
India  more  secure  is  very  doubtful,  and,  if  certain,  would  be 
a  point  of  little  moment.  If,  when  India  has  passed  through 
the  present  transition  stage  from  a  country  of  many  peoples 
to  a  country  of  only  one,  Ave  can  not  continue  to  rule  her  by 
the  consent  of  the  majority  of  her  inhabitants,  or  occupation 
of  the  country  must  come  to  an  end,  whether  Ave  will  or  no. 
At  the  same  time,  the  union  of  interests  and  community  of 
ideas  which  Avould  rise  out  of  well-ordered  settlement  would 
do  much  to  endear  our  Government  to  the  great  body  of  the 
natives.  As  a  warning  against  European  settlement  as  it  is, 
every  Englishman  should  read  the  drama  "  Nil  Darpan." 


450  Greater  Britain. 

During  my  stay  at  Simla  I  visited  a  pretty  fair  in  one  of 
the  neighboring  valleys.  There  was  much  buffoonery  and 
dancing — among  other  things,  a  sort  of  jig  by  a  fakecr,  who 
danced  himself  into  a  fit,  real  or  pretended ;  but  the  charm 
of  this,  as  of  all  Hindoo  gatherings,  lay  in  the  color.  The 
women  of  the  Punjaub  dress  vcrygayly  for  their  fetes,  wear- 
ing tight-fitting  trowsers  of  crimson,  blue,  or  yellow,  and  a 
long  thin  robe  of  white, or  crimson-grounded  Cashmere  shawl ; 
bracelets  and  anklets  of  silver,  and  a  nose-ring,  either  huge 
and  thin,  or  small  and  nearly  solid — complete  the  dress. 

At  the  fair  were  many  of  the  Goorkhas  (of  whom  there  is 
a  regiment  at  Simla),  who  danced,  and  seemingly  enjoyed 
themselves  immensely  ;  indeed,  the  natives  of  all  parts  of  In- 
dia, from  Nepaul  to  the  Deccan,  possess  a  most  enviable  fac- 
ulty of  amusement,  a'nd  they  say  that  there  is  a  professional 
buffoon  attached  to  every  Goorkha  regiment.  Their  full- 
dress  is  like  that  of  the  French  chasseurs  dpied,  but  in  their  un- 
dress uniform  of  white,  the  trowsers  worn  so  tight  as  to  wrin- 
kle from  stretching — these  dashing  little  fellows,  with  their 
thin  legs,  broad  shoulders,  bullet  heads,  and  flat  faces,  look  ex- 
tremely like  a  corps  of  jockeys.  A  general  inspecting  one 
of  these  regiments  once  said  to  the  colonel, "  Your  men  are 
small,  sir."  "  Their  pay  is  small,  sir  !"  growled  the  colonel, 
in  a  towering  passion. 

There  were  unmistakable  traces  of  Buddhist  architecture 
in  the  little  valley  Hindoo  shrine.  Of  the  Chinese  pilgrim- 
ages to  India  in  the  Buddhist  period  there  are  many  records 
yet  extant,  and  one  of  these,  we  are  told,  relates  how,  as  late 
as  the  fourteenth  century,  the  Emperor  of  China  asked  leav* 
of  the  Delhi  ruler  to  rebuild  a  temple  at  the  southern  base 
of  the  Himalayas,  inasmuch  as  it  was  visited  by  his  Tartar 
people. 


The  Gazette.  451 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE     "GAZETTE." 

Op  all  printed  information  upon  India,  there  is  none  which, 
either  for  value  or  interest,  can  be  ranked  with  that  contained 
in  the  Government  Gazette,  which  during  my  stay  at  Simla 
was  published  at  that  town,  the  Viceroy's  Council  having 
moved  there  for  the  hot  weather.  Not  only  are  the  records 
of  the  mere  routine  business  interesting  from  their  variety, 
but  almost  every  week  there  is  printed  along  with  the  Gazette 
a  supplement,  which  contains  memoranda  from  leading  na- 
tives or  from  the  representatives  of  the  local  governments 
upon  the  operations  of  certain  customs,  or  on  the  probable 
effects  of  a  proposed  law,  or  similar  communications.  Some- 
times the  circulars  issued  by  the  Government  are  alone  re- 
printed, "  with  a  view  to  elicit  opinions,"  but  more  generally 
the  whole  of  the  replies  are  given. 

It  is  difficult  for  English  readers  to  conceive  the  number 
and  variety  of  subjects  upon  which  a  single  number  of  the 
Gazette  will  give  information  of  some  kind.  The  paragraphs 
are  strung  together  in  the  order  in  which  they  are  received, 
without  arrangement  or  connection.  "A  copy  of  a  treaty 
with  his  Highness  the  Maharajah  of  Cashmere  "  stands  side 
by  side  with  a  grant  of  three  months'  leave  to  a  lieutenant  of 
Bombay  Native  Foot ;  while  above  is  an  account  of  the  sup- 
pression of  the  late  murderous  outrages  in  the  Punjaub,  and 
below  a  narrative  of  the  upsetting  of  the  Calcutta  mails  into 
a  river  near  Jubbelpore.  "A  khureta  from  the  Viceroy  to 
his  Highness  the  Rao  Oomaid  Singh  Bahadoor"  orders  him 
to  put  down  crime  in  his  dominions,  and  the  humble  answer 
of  the  rao  is  printed,  in  Avhich  he  promises  to  do  his  best. 
Paragraphs  are  given  to  "  the  floating  -  dock  at  Rangoon  ;" 
"  the  disease  among  mail-horses  ;"  "  the  Suez  Canal ;"  "  the 
forests  of  Oude ;"  and  "  polygamy  among  the  Hindoos."  The 
viceroy  contributes  a  "  note  on  the  administration  of  the 
Khetree   chieftainship ;"    the   Bengal    Government   sends   a 


452  Greater  Britain. 

memorandum  on  "  bribery  of  telegraph  clerks ;"  and  the 
Resident  of  Kotah  an  official  report  of  the  ceremonies  attend- 
ing the  reception  of  a  vice-regal  khureta  restoring  the  honors 
of  a  salute  to  the  Maha  Rao  of  Kotah.  The  khureta  was  re- 
ceived in  state,  the  letter  being  mounted  alone  upon  an  ele- 
phant magnificently  caparisoned,  and  saluted  from  the  palace 
with  101  guns.  There  is  no  honor  that  avc  can  pay  to  a 
native  prince  so  great  as  that  of  increasing  his  salute,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  when  the  Guicodar  of  Baroda  allows  a  suttee, 
or  when  Jung  Bahadoor  of  Nepaul  expresses  his  intention  of 
visiting  Paris,  we  punish  them  by  docking  them  of  two  guns, 
or  abolishing  their  salute,  according  to  the  magnitude  of  the 
offense. 

An  order  in  Council  confers  upon  the  High-priest  -of  the 
Parsees  in  the  Deccan, "  in  consideration  of  his  services  dur- 
ing the  mutiny  of  185V,"  the  honorary  title  of  "Khan  Baha- 
door." A  paragraph  announces  that  an  official  investigation 
has  been  made  into  the  supposed  desecration  by  Scindia  and 
the  viceroy  of  a  mosque  at  Agra,  and  that  it  has  been  found 
that  the  place  in  question  was  not  a  mosque  at  all.  Scindia 
had  given  an  entertainment  to  the  viceroy  at  the  Taj  Mahal, 
and  supper  had  been  laid  out  at  a  building  in  the  grounds. 
The  native  papers  said  the  building  was  a  mosque,  but  the 
Agra  officials  triumphantly  demonstrated  that  it  had  been 
used  for  a  supper  to  Lord  Ellenborough  after  the  capture  of 
Cabool,  and  that  its  name  meant  "  feast-place."  "  Report  on 
the  light-houses  of  the  Abyssinian  coast ;"  "Agreement  with 
the  Governor  of  Leh,"  Thibet,  in  reference  to  the  trans-Him- 
alayan caravans ;  the  ju'omotion  of  one  gentleman  to  be 
"  Commissioner  of  Coorg,"  and  of  another  to  be  "  Superin- 
tendent of  the  teak  forests  of  Lower  Burmah ;"  "  Evidence 
on  the  proposed  measures  to  suppress  the  abuses  of  polyandry 
in  Travancore  and  Cochin  (by  arrangement  with  the  Rajah 
of  Travancore) ;"  "  Dismissal  of  Policeman  Juggernauth  Rarn- 
kam  —  Oude  division,  No.  11  company  —  for  gross  miscon- 
duct ;"  "  Report  on  the  Orissa  famine ;"  "  Plague  in  Turkey  ;" 
"  Borer  insects  in  coffee-plantations ;"  "  Presents  to  gentlemen 
at  Fontainebleau  for  teaching  forestry  to  Indian  officers ;" 
"  Report  on  the  Cotton  States  of  America,"  for  the  informa- 
tion of  native  planters ;    "  Division  of  Calcutta  into  postal 


The  Gazette.  453 

districts  "  (in  Bengalee  as  well  as  English) ;  "  Late  engage- 
ment between  the  Punjaub  cavalry  and  the  Afghan  tribes ;" 
"Pension  of  3rs.  per  mensem  to  the  widow  (aged  12)  of  Jam- 
ram  Chesa,  Sepoy,  27th  Bengal  N.  I."  are  other  headings. 
The  relative  space  given  to  matters  of  importance  and  to 
those  of  little  moment  is  altogether  in  favor  of  the  latter. 
The  government  of  two  millions  of  people  is  transferred  in 
three  lines,  but  a  page  is  taken  up  with  a  list  of  the  caste- 
marks  and  nose-borings  of  native  women  applying  for  pen- 
sions as  soldiers'  widows,  and  two  pages  are  full  of  advertise- 
ments of  lost  currency  notes. 

The  columns  of  the  Gazette,  or  at  all  events  its  supple- 
ments, offer  to  Government  officials  whose  opinion  has  been 
asked  upon  questions  on  which  they  possess  valuable  knowl- 
edge, or  in  which  the  people  of  their  district  are  concerned, 
an  opportunity  of  attacking  the  acts  or  laws  of  the  Govern- 
ment itself — a  chance  of  which  they  are  not  slow  to  take  ad- 
vantage. One  covertly  attacks  the  license-tax ;  a  second, 
under  pretense  of  giving  his  opinion  on  some  proposed 
change  in  the  contract  law,  backs  the  demands  of  the  indigo- 
planters  for  a  law  that  shall  compel  specific  performance  of 
labor-contracts  on  the  part  of  the  workman,  and  under  penalty 
of  imprisonment ;  another  lays  all  the  ills  under  which  India 
can  be  shown  to  suffer  at  the  door  of  the  Home  Government, 
and  points  out  the  ruinous  effects  of  continual  changes  of 
Indian  secretaries  in  London. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  overrate  the  importance  of  the 
supplements  to  the  Gazette,  viewed  either  as  a  substitute  for  a 
system  of  communicated  articles  to  the  native  papers,  or  as 
material  for  English  statesmen,  whether  in  India  or  at  home, 
or  as  a  great  experiment  in  the  direction  of  letting  the  peo- 
ple of  India  legislate  for  themselves.  The  results  of  no  less 
than  three  Government  inquiries  were  printed  in  the  supple- 
ment during  my  stay  in  India,  the  first  being  in  the  shape  of 
a  circular  to  the  various  local  governments  requesting  their 
opinion  on  the  proposed  extension  to  natives  of  the  testa- 
mentary succession  laws  contained  in  the  Indian  Civil  Code ; 
while  the  second  related  to  the  "  ghaut  murders,"  and  the 
third  to  the  abuses  of  polygamy  among  the  Hindoos.  The 
second  and  third  inquiries  were  conducted  by  means  of  cir- 


45i  Greater  Britain. 

culars  addressed  by  Government  to  those  most  interested, 
whether  native  or  European. 

The  evidence  in  reply  to  the  "  ghaut  murder "  circular 
was  commenced  by  a  letter  from  the  Secretary  to  the  Gov- 
ernment of  Bengal  to  the  Secretary  to  the  Government  of 
India,  calling  the  attention  of  the  Viceroy  in  Council  to  an 
article  written  in  Bengalee  by  a  Hindoo  in  the  Dacca  Prokash 
on  the  practice  of  taking  sick  Hindoos  to  the  river-side  to 
die.  It  appears  from  this  letter  that  the  local  governments 
pay  careful  attention  to  the  opinions  of  the  native  papers — 
unless,  indeed,  we  are  to  accept  the  view  that  "  the  Hindoo  " 
was  a  Government  clerk,  and  the  article  written  to  order — 
a  supposition  favored  by  its  radical  and  destructive  tone. 
The  viceroy  answered  that  the  local  officers  and  native  gen- 
tlemen of  all  shades  of  religious  opinion  were  to  be  privately 
consulted.  A  confidential  communication  was  then  addressed 
to  eleven  English  and  four  Hindoo  gentlemen,  and  the  opin- 
ions of  the  English  and  native  newspapers  were  unofficially 
invited.  The  Europeans  were  chiefly  for  the  suppression  of 
the  practice ;  the  natives  —  with  the  exception  of  one,  who 
made  a  guarded  reply — stated  that  the  abuses  of  the  custom 
had  been  exaggerated,  and  that  they  could  not  recommend 
its  suppression.  The  Government  agreed  with  the  natives, 
and  decided  that  nothing  should  be  done  —  an  opinion  in 
which  the  Secretary  of  State  concurred. 

In  his  reply  to  the  "  ghaut  murder  "  circular  the  represent- 
ative of  the  orthodox  Hindoos,  after  pointing  out  that  the 
Dacca  Prokash  is  the  Dacca  organ  of  the  Brahmos,  or  Bengal 
Deists,  and  not  of  the  true  Hindoos,  went  on  to  quote  at  length 
from  the  Hindoo  Scriptures  passages  which  show  that  to  die 
in  the  Ganges  water  is  the  most  blessed  of  all  deaths.  The 
quotations  were  printed  in  native  character  as  well  as  in  En- 
glish in  the  Gazette.  One  of  the  officials  in  his  reply  pointed 
out  that  the  discouragement  of  a  custom  was  often  as  effect- 
ive as  its  prohibition,  and  instanced  the  cessation  of  the  prac- 
tice of  "  hook-swinging  "  and  "  self-mutilation." 

Valuable  as  is  the  correspondence  as  a  sample  of  the  meth- 
od pursued  in  such  inquiries,  the  question  under  discussion  has 
not  the  importance  that  attaches  to  the  examination  into  the 
abuses  of  the  practice  of  polygamy. 


Tite  Gazette.  455 

To  prevent  an  outcry  that  the  customs  of  the  Hindoo  peo- 
ple were  being  attacked,  the  Lieutenant-governor  of  Bengal 
stated  in  his  letters  to  the  Government  of  India  that  it  was 
his  wish  that  the  inquiry  should  be  strictly  confined  to  the 
abuses  of  Koolin  polygamy,  and  that  there  should  be  no  gener- 
al examination  into  ordinary  polygamy,  which  was  not  opposed 
even  by  enlightened  Hindoos.  The  polygamy  of  the  Koolin 
Brahmins  is  a  system  of  taking  a  plurality  of  wives  as  a  means 
of  subsistence :  the  Koolins  were  originally  Brahmins  of  pecul- 
iar merit,  and  such  was  their  sanctity  that  there  grew  up  a 
custom  of  payments  being  made  to  them  by  the  fathers  of  the 
forty  or  fifty  women  whom  they  honored  by  marriage.  So 
greatly  has  the  custom  grown  that  Koolins  have  sometimes  as 
many  as  eighty  wives,  and  the  husband's  sole  means  of  sub- 
sistence consists  in  payments  from  the  fathers  of  his  wives, 
each  of  whom  he  visits,  however,  only  once  in  three  or  four 
years.  The  Koolin  Brahmins  live  in  luxury  and  indolence, 
their  wives  exist  in  misery,  and  the  whole  custom  is  plainly 
repuguaut  to  the  teachings  of  the  Hindoo  Scriptures,  and  is 
productive  of  vice  and  crime.  The  committee  appointed  for 
the  consideration  of  the  subject  by  the  Lieutenant-governor 
of  Bengal — which  consisted  of  two  English  civilians  and  five 
natives — reported  that  the  suggested  systems  of  registration 
of  marriages,  or  of  fines  increasing  in  amount  for  every  mar- 
riage after  the  first,  would  limit  the  general  liberty  of  the 
Hindoos  to  take  many  wives,  which  they  were  forbidden  to 
touch.  On  the  other  hand,  to  recommend  a  declaratory  law  on 
plural  marriages  would  be  to  break  their  instructions,  which 
ordered  them  to  refrain  from  giving  the  sanction  of  English 
law  to  Hindoo  polygamy.  One  native  dissented  from  the  re- 
port, and  favored  a  declaratory  law. 

The  English  idea  of  "  not  recognizing  "  customs  or  religions 
which  exist  among  a  large  number  of  the  inhabitants  of  En- 
glish countries  is  a  strange  one,  and  productive  of  much  harm. 
It  is  not  necessary,  indeed,  that  we  should  countenance  the 
worship  of  Juggernauth  by  ordering  our  officials  to  present 
offerings  at  his  shrine,  but  it  is  at  least  necessary  that  we 
should  recognize  native  customs  by  legislating  to  restrain  them 
within  due  limits.  To  refuse  to  "  recognize"  polygamy,  which 
is  the  social  state  of  the  vast  majority  of  the  citizens  of  the 


456  Greater  Britain. 

British  Empire,  is  not  less  ridiculous  than  to  refuse  to  recognize 
that  Hindoos  are  black. 

Kecognition  is  one  thing,  interference  another.  How  far 
we  should  interfere  with  native  customs  is  a  question  upon 
which  no  general  rule  can  be  given,  unless  it  be  that  we  should 
in  all  cases  of  proposed  interference  with  social  usages  or  re- 
ligious ceremonies  consult  intelligent  but  orthodox  natives,  and 
act  up  to  their  advice.  In  Ceylon  we  have  prohibited  polyg- 
amy and  polyandry,  although  the  law  is  not  enforced ;  in  India 
we  "  unofficially  recognize  "  the  custom ;  in  Singapore  we  have 
distinctly  recognized  it  by  an  amendment  to  the  Indian  Suc- 
cession Law,  which  there  applies  to  natives  as  well  as  Eu- 
ropeans. In  India  we  put  down  suttee;  while  in  Australia 
we  tolerate  customs  at  least  as  barbarous. 

One  of  the  social  systems  which  Ave  recognize  in  India  is 
far  more  revolting  to  our  English  feelings  than  is  that  of  po- 
lygamy— namely,  the  custom  of  polyandry,  under  which  each 
woman  has  many  husbands  at  a  time.  This  custom  we  unof- 
ficially recognize  as  completely  as  we  do  polygyny,  although 
it  prevails  only  on  the  Malabar  coast  and  among  the  hill-tribes 
of  the  Himalaya,  and  not  among  the  strict  Hindoos.  The 
Thibetan  frontier  tribes  have  a  singular  form  of  the  institu- 
tion, for  with  them  the  woman  is  the  wife  of  all  the  broth- 
ers of  a  family,  the  eldest  brother  choosing  her,  and  the  eldest 
son  succeeding  to  the  property  of  his  mother  and  all  her  hus- 
bands. In  Southern  India  the  polyandry  of  the  present  day 
differs  little  from  that  which  in  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century  Kicolo  de  Conti  found  flourishing  in  Calicut.  Each 
woman  has  several  husbands,  some  as  many  as  ten,  who  all 
contribute  to  her  maintenance,  she  living  apart  from  all  of 
them ;  and  the  children  are  allotted  to  the  husbands  at  the  will 
of  the  wife. 

The  toleration  of  polygyny,  or  common  polygamy,  is  a  vex- 
ed question  everywhere.  In  India  all  authorities  are  in  favor 
of  respecting  it ;  in  Natal  opinion  is  the  other  way.  While 
we  suppress  it  in  Ceylon,  even  among  black  races  conquered 
by  us  with  little  pretext  only  fifty  years  ago,  we  arc  doubtful 
as  to  the  propriety  of  its  suppression  by  the  United  States 
among  white  people,  who,  whatever  was  the  case  with  the  orig- 
inal leaders,  have  for  the  most  part  settled  down  in  Utah  since 


The  Gazette.  457 

it  has  been  the  territory  of  a  nation  whose  imperial  laws  pro- 
hibit polygamy  in  plain  terms. 

The  inquiries  into  the  abuses  of  polygamy  which  have 
lately  been  conducted  in  Bengal  and  in  Natal  have  revealed 
singular  differences  between  the  polygamy  of  the  Hindoos  and 
of  the  hill-tribes,  between  Indian  and  Mormon  polygamy,  and 
between  both  and  the  Mohammedan  law.  The  Hindoo  laws, 
while  they  limit  the  number  of  legal  wives,  allow  of  concu- 
bines, and,  in  the  Maharajah  case,  Sir  Joseph  Arnould  went 
so  far  as  to  say  that  polygamy  and  courtesanship  are  always 
found  to  flourish  side  by  side,  although  the  reverse  is  notori- 
ously the  case  at  Salt  Lake  City,  where  concubinage  is  pun- 
ishable, in  name  at  least,  by  death.  Again,  polygamy  is 
somewhat  discouraged  by  Mohammedan  and  Hindoo  laws, 
and  the  latter-  even  lay  down  the  sum  which  in  many  cases  is 
to  be  paid  to  the  first  wife  as  compensation  for  the  wrong 
done  her  by  the  taking  of  other  wives.  Among  the  Mor- 
mons, on  the  other  hand,  polygamy  is  enjoined  upon  the  faith- 
ful, and,  so  far  from  feeling  herself  aggrieved,  the  first  wife 
herself  selects  the  others,  or  is  at  the  least  consulted.  Among 
some  of  the  hill-tribes  of  India,  such  as  the  Paharis  of  Bhau- 
gulpoor,  polygamy  is  encouraged,  but  with  a  limitation  to 
four  wives. 

Among  the  Mohammedans  the  number  of  marriages  is  re- 
stricted, and  divorce  is  common ;  among  the  Mormons,  there 
is  no  limit — indeed,  the  more  wives  the  greater  a  man's  glory 
— and  divorce  is  all  but  unknown.  The  greatest,  however, 
of  all  the  many  differences  between  Eastern  and  Mormon 
polygamy  lies  in  the  fact  that  of  the  Eastern  wives  one  is  the 
chief,  while  Mormon  wives  are  absolutely  equal  in  legitimacy 
and  rank. 

Not  only  is  equality  the  law,  but  the  first  wife  has  recog- 
nized superiority  of  position  over  the  others  in  the  Mormon 
family.  By  custom  she  is  always  consulted  by  her  husband 
in  reference  to  the  choice  of  a  new  wife,  while  the  other 
wives  are  not  always  asked  for  their  opinion ;  but  this  is  a 
matter  of  habit,  and  the  husband  is  in  no  way  bound  by  her 
decision.  Again,  the  first  wife — if  she  is  a  consenting  party 
— often  gives  away  the  fresh  wives  at  the  altar ;  but  this,  too, 
is  a  mere  custom.     The  fact  that  in  India  one  of  the  wives 

U 


458  Greater  Britain. 

generally  occupies  a  position  of  far  higher  dignity  than  that 
held  by  the  others  will  make  Indian  polygamy  easy  to  de- 
stroy by  the  lapse  of  time  and  operation  of  social  and  moral 
causes.  As  the  city-dwelling  natives  come  to  mix  more  with 
the  Europeans  they  will  find  that  only  one  of  their  wives  will 
be  generally  recognized.  This  will  tend  of  itself  to  repress 
polygamy  among  the  wealthy  native  merchants  and  among 
the  rajahs  who  are  members  of  our  various  councils,  and  their 
example  will  gradually  react  ,upon  the  body  of  the  natives. 
Already  a  majority  of  the  married  people  of  India  are  mo- 
nogamist by  practice,  although  polygamists  in  theory ;  their 
marriages  being  limited  by  poverty,  although  not  by  law. 
The  classes  which  have  to  be  reached  are  the  noble  families, 
the  merchants,  and  the  priests  ;  and  over  the  two  former 
European  influence  is  considerable,  while  the  inquiry  into 
Koolinism  has  proved  that  the  leading  natives  will  aid  us  in 
repressing  the  abuses  of  polygamy  among  the  priests. 


CHAPTER  X. 

UMEITSUE. 

At  Umbala  I  heard  that  the  Sikh  pilgrims  returning  from 
the  sacred  fair,  or  great  Hindoo  camp-meeting,  at  Hurdwar, 
had  been  attacked  by  cholera,  and  excluded  from  the  town ; 
and  as  I  quitted  Umbala  in  the  evening  I  came  upon  the 
cholera-stricken  train  of  pilgrims  escaping  by  forced  marches 
toward  their  homes,  in  many  cases  a  thousand  miles  away. 
Tall,  lithe,  long-bearded  men,  with  large  hooked  noses,  high 
foreheads,  and  thin  lq)S,  stalked  along,  leading  by  one  hand 
their  veiled  women,  who  ran  behind,  their  crimson  and  or- 
ange trowsers  stained  with  the  dust  of  travel,  while  bullock- 
carts  decked  out  with  jingling  bells  bore  the  tired  and  the 
sick.  Many  children  of  all  ages  were  in  the  throng.  For 
mile  after  mile  I  drove  through  their  ranks,  as  they  marched 
with  a  strange  kind  of  weary  haste,  and  marched,  too,  with 
few  halts,  with  little  rest,  if  any.  One  great  camp  we  left 
behind  us,  but  only  one ;  and  all  night  long  we  were  still 
passing  ranks  of  marching  men  and  women.  The  march  was 
silent ;    there   was  none  of  the   usual  chatter  of  an  Indian 


Umritsur.  459 

crowd ;  gloom  was  in  every  face,  and  the  people  marched 
like  a  beaten  army  flying  from  a  destroying  foe. 

The  disease,  indeed,  was  pressing  on  their  heels.  Two 
hundred  men  and  women,  as  I  was  told  at  the  Umbala  lines, 
had  died  among  them  in  the  single  day.  Many  had  drop- 
ped from  fright  alone ;  but  the  pestilence  was  in  the  horde, 
and  its  seeds  were  carried  into  whatever  villages  the  pilgrims 
reached. 

The  gathering  at  Hurdwar  had  been  attended  by  a  million 
people  drawn  from  every  part  of  the  Punjaub  and  North- 
west ;  not  only  Hindoos  and  Sikhs,  but  Scindees,  Beloochees, 
Pathans,  and  Afghans  had  their  representatives  in  this  great 
throng.  As  we  neared  the  bridge  of  boats  across  the  Sutlej 
I  found  that  a  hurried  quarantine  had  been  set  up  on  the 
spot.  Only  the  sick  or  dying  and  bearers  of  corpses  were  de- 
tained, however ;  a  few  questions  were  asked  of  the  remain- 
der, and  ultimately  they  were  allowed  to  cross :  but  driving 
on  at  speed  I  reached  Jullundur  in  the  morning,  only  to  find 
that  the  pilgrims  had  been  denied  admittance  to  the  town. 
A  camp  had  been  formed  without  the  city,  to  which  the  pil- 
grims had  to  go,  unless  they  preferred  to  straggle  on  along 
the  roads,  dropping  and  dying  by  the  way ;  and  the  villagers 
throughout  the  country  had  risen  on  the  wretched  people,  to 
prevent  them  returning  to  their  homes. 

It  is  not  strange  that  the  Government  of  India  should  late- 
ly have  turned  its  attention  to  the  regulation  or  suppression 
of  these  fairs,  for  the  city-dwelling  people  of  North  India  will 
not  continue  long  to  tolerate  enormous  gatherings  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  hot  weather,  by  which  the  lives  of  thousands 
must  ultimately  be  lost.  At  Hurdwai-,  at  Juggernauth,  and 
at  many  other  holy  spots,  hundreds  of  thousands — millions, 
not  unf  requently — are  collected  yearly  from  all  parts  of  India. 
Great  princes  come  down  travelling  slowly  from  their  capitals 
with  trains  o  troops  and  followers  so  long  that  they  often 
take  a  day  or  more  to  pass  a  <>;ivcn  spot.  The  Maharajah  of 
Cashmere's  camp  between  Kalka  and  Umbala  occupied  when 
I  saw  it  more  space  than  that  of  Aldershot.  Camels,  women, 
sutlers  without  count,  follow  in  the  train,  so  that  a  body  of 
five  thousand  men  is  multiplied  until  it  occupies  the  space  and 
requires  the  equipments  of  a  vast  army.     A  huge  multitude 


160  Greater  Britain. 

of  cultivators,  of  princes,  of  fakeers,  and  of  roisterers  met  for 
ihe  excitement  and  the  pleasures  of  the  camp,  is  gathered 
about  the  holy  spot.  There  is  religion,  and  there  is  trade ; 
indeed,  the  religious  pilgrims  are  for  the  most  part  shrewd 
traders,  bent  on  making  a  good  profit  from  their  visit  to  the 
fair. 

The  gathering  at  Hurdwar  in  1867  had  been  more  than 
usually  well  attended  and  successful,  when  suddenly  a  rumor 
of  cholera  was  heai'd ;  the  police  procured  the  break-up  of  the 
camp,  and  Government  thought  fit  to  prohibit  the  visit  to 
Simla  of  the  Maharajah  of  Cashmere.  The  pilgrims  had 
hardly  left  the  camp  upon  their  journey  home  when  cholera 
broke  out,  and  by  the  time  I  passed  them  hundreds  were  al- 
ready dead,  and  a  panic  had  spread  through  India.  The  chol- 
era soon  followed  the  rumor,  and  spread  even  to  the  healthi- 
est hill-towns,  and  6000  deaths  occurred  in  the  city  of  Sri- 
nuggur  after  the  Maharajah's  return  Avith  his  infected  escort 
from  Hurdwar.  A  Government  which  has  checked  infanti- 
cide and  suppressed  suttee  could  not  fail  to  succeed,  if  it  in- 
terfered, in  causing  these  fairs  to  be  held  in  the  cold  weather. 

At  Jullundur  I  encountered  a  terrible  dust-storm.  It  came 
from  the  south  and  west,  and,  to  judge  from  its  fierceness, 
must  have  been  driven  before  the  wind  from  the  great  sandy 
desert  of  Northern  Scinde.  The  sun  was  rising  for  a  sultry 
day  when  from  the  south  there  came  a  blast  which  in  a  min- 
ute covered  the  sky  with  a  leaden  cloud,  while  from  the  ho- 
rizon there  advanced,  more  slowly,  a  lurid  mass  of  reddish- 
brown.  It  soon  reached  the  city,  and  then,  from  the  wall 
where  I  sought  shelter,  nothing  could  be  seen  but  driving 
sand  of  ochre  color,  nothing  heard  but  the  shrieking  of  the 
wind.  The  gale  ceased  as  suddenly  as  it  began,  but  left  a 
day  which,  delightful  to  travellers  upon  the  Indian  plains, 
would  elsewhere  have  been  called  by  many  a  hard  name — a 
day  of  lowering  sky  and  dropping  rain,  with  chilling  cold — 
in  short,  a  day  that  felt  and  looked  like  an  English  thaw, 
though  the  thermometer  must  have  stood  at  75°.  Another 
legacy  from  the  storm  was  a  view  of  the  Himalayas  such  as  is 
seldom  given  to  the  dwellers  on  the  plains.  Looking  at  the 
clouds  upon  the  northern  horizon  I  suddenly  caught  sight  of 
the  Snowy  Range  hanging,  as  it  seemed,  above  them,  half-way 


Umritsur.  4G1 

up  the  skies.  Seen  with  a  foreground  of  dawk  jungle  in 
bright  bloom,  the  scene  was  beautiful ;  but  the  view  too  dis- 
tant to  be  grand,  except  through  the  ideas  of  immensity 
called  up  by  the  loftiness  of  the  peaks.  While  crossing  the 
Beeas  (the  ancient  Hyphasis,  and  eastern  boundary  of  the 
Persian  Empire  in  the  days  of  Darius),  as  I  had  crossed  the 
Sutlej,  by  a  bridge  of  boats,  I  noticed  that  the  railway  via- 
duct, which  was  being  built  for  the  future  Umritsur  and  Del- 
hi line,  stood  some  way  from  the  deep  water  of  the  river  ;  in- 
deed, stood  chiefly  upon  dry  land.  The  rivers  change  their 
course  so  often  that  the  Beeas  and  Sutlej  bridges  will  each 
have  to  be  made  a  mile  long.  There  has  lately  been  given  us 
in  the  Punjaub  a  singular  instance  of  the  blind  confidence  in 
which  Government  orders  are  carried  out  by  the  subordinates. 
The  order  was  that  the  iron  columns  on  which  the  Beeas 
bridge  was  to  rest  should  each  bo  forty-five  feet  long.  In 
placing  them,  in  some  cases  the  bottom  of  the  forty-five  feet 
was  in  the  shifting  sand,  in  others  it  was  thirty  feet  below 
the  surface  of  the  solid  rock ;  but  a  boring  which  was  need- 
less in  the  one  case  and  worse  than  useless  in  the  other  has 
been  persevered  in  to  the  end,  the  story  runs,  because  it  was 
the  "  hook'm."  The  Indian  rivers  are  the  great  bars  to  road 
and  railway  making;  indeed,  except  on  the  Grand  Trunk 
road,  it  may  be  said  that  the  rivers  of  India  are  still  un- 
bridged.  On  the  chief  mail-roads  stone  causeways  are  built 
across  the  river-beds,  but  the  streams  are  all  but  impass- 
able during  the  rains.  Even  on  the  road  from  Kalka  to  Um- 
bala,  however,  there  is  one  river-bed  without  a  causeway, 
across  which  the  dawk-gharree  is  dragged  by  bullocks,  who 
struggle  slowly  through  the  sand  ;  and  in  crossing  it  I  saw  a 
steam-engine  lying  half-buried  in  the  drift. 

In  India  we  have  been  sadly  neglectful  of  the  roads.  The 
Grand  Trunk  road  and  the  few  great  railroads  are  the  only 
means  of  communication  in  the  country.  Even  between  the 
terminus  of  the  Bengal  lines  at  Jubbelporc  and  of  the  Bom- 
bay Railroad  at  Nagpore  there  was  at  the  time  of  my  visit 
no  metalled  road,  although  the  distance  was  but  200  miles,  and 
the  mails  already  passed  that  way.  Half  a  day  at  least  was 
lost  upon  all  the  Calcutta  letters,  and  Calcutta  passengers  for 
Bombay  or  England  were  put  to  an  additional  expense  of 


462  Greater  Britain. 

some  £30  and  a  loss  of  a  week  ov  ten  days  in  time  from  the 
absence  of  200  miles  of  road.  Until  we  have  good  cross- 
roads in  India,  and  metalled  roads  into  the  interior  from  every 
railway  station,  we  shall  never  succeed  in  increasing  the  trade 
of  India,  nor  in  civilizing  its  inhabitants.  The  Grand  Trunk 
road  is,  hoAvever,  the  best  in  the  world,  and  is  formed  of  soft 
white  nodules,  found  in  beds  through  North  India,  which 
when  pounded  and  mixed  with  water  is  known  as  "  kunkur," 
and  makes  a  road  hard,  smooth,  clean,  and  lasting,  not  unlike 
to  that  which  asphalt  gives. 

At  Umritsur  I  first  found  myself  in  the  true  East — the 
East  of  myrtles,  roses,  and  veiled  figures  with  flashing  eyes — 
the  East  of  the  "  Arabian  Nights  "  and  "  Lalla  Rookh."  The 
city  itself  is  Persian,  rather  than  Indian,  in  its  character,  and 
is  overgrown  with  date-palms,  pomegranates,  and  the  roses 
from  which  the  precious  attar  is  distilled.  Umritsur  has  the 
making  of  the  attar  for  the  world,  and  it  is  made  from  a  rose 
which  blossoms  only  once  a  year.  Ten  tons  of  petals  of  the; 
ordinary  country  rose  {Rosa  centifolia)  are  used  annually  in 
attar-making  at  Umritsur,  and  are  worth  from  £20  to  £30  a 
ton  in  the  raw  state.  The  petals  are  placed  in  the  retort 
with  a  small  quantity  of  water,  and  heat  is  applied  until  the 
water  is  distilled  through  a  hollow  bamboo  into  a  second  ves- 
sel, which  contains  sandal-wood  oil.  A  small  quantity  of  pure 
attar  passes  with  the  water  into  the  receiver.  The  contents 
of  the  receiver  are  then  poured  out,  and  allowed  to  stand  till 
the  attar  rises  to  the  surface,  in  small  globules,  and  is  skimmed 
off.     The  pure  attar  sells  for  its  weight  in  silver. 

Umritsur  is  famous  for  another  kind  of  merchandise  more 
precious  even  than  the  attar.  It  is  the  seat  of  the  Cashmere 
shawl  trade,  and  three  great  French  firms  have  their  houses  in 
the  town,  Avhere,  through  the  help  of  friends,  shawls  may  be 
obtained  at  singularly  low  prices ;  but  travellers  in  far-off  re- 
gions are  often  in  the  financial  position  of  the  Texan  hunter 
who  was  offered  a  million  of  acres  for  a  pair  of  boots — they 
"  have  not  got  the  boots." 

It  is  only  shawls  of  the  second  class  that  can  be  bought 
cheap  at  Umritsur ;  those  of  the  finest  quality  vary  in  price 
from  £40  to  £250,  £30  being  the  cost  of  the  material.  The 
shawl  manufacture  of  the  Punjaub  is  not  confined  to  Umritsur; 


Umritsur.  463 

there  are  900  shawl-making  shops  in  Loodiana,  I  was  told 
while  there.  There  are  more  than  sixty  permanent  dies  in  use 
at  the  Umritsur  shawl  shops ;  cochineal,  indigo,  log-wood, 
and  saffron  are  the  commonest  and  best.  The  shawls  arc 
made  of  the  down  which  underlies  the  hair  of  the  "  shawl 
goat "  of  the  higher  levels.  The  yak,  the  camel,  and  the  dog 
of  the  Himalayas,  all  possess  this  down,  as  well  as  their  hair 
or  wool ;  it  serves  them  as  a  protection  against  the  winter 
cold.  Ghogas — long  cloaks  used  as  dressing-gowns  by  Euro- 
peans— are  also  made  in  Umritsur  from  the  soft  wool  of  the 
Bokhara  camel,  for  Umritsur  is  now  the  head-quarters  of  the 
Central  Asian  trade  with  Hindostan. 

The  bazar  is  the  gayest  and  most  bustling  in  India — the 
goods  of  all  India  and  Central  Asia  are  there.  Dacca  muslin 
— known  as  "woven  air" — lies  side  by  side  with  thick  chogas 
of  kinkob  and  embroidered  Cashmere,  Indian  towels  of  coarse 
huckaback  half  cover  Chinese  watered  silks,  and  the  brilliant 
dies  of  the  brocades  of  Central  India  are  relieved  by  the  mod- 
est grays  of  the  soft  puttoo  caps.  The  buyers  are  as  motley 
as  the  goods — Rajpoots  in  turbans  of  deep  blue,  ornamented 
with  gold  thread,  Cashmere  valley  herdsmen  in  strange  caps, 
nautch  girls  from  the  first  three  bridges  of  Srinuggur,  some 
of  the  so-called  "  hill  fanatics,"  whose  only  religion  is  to  levy 
contributions  on  the  people  of  the  plains,  and  Sikh  troopers, 
home  on  leave,  stalking  tln-ough  the  streets  with  a  haughty 
swagger.  Some  of  the  Sikhs  wear  the  pointed  helmets  of 
their  ancestors,  the  ancient  Sakse  ;  but  whether  he  be  helmeted 
or  not,  the  enormous  white  beard  of  the  Sikh,  the  fierce  curl 
of  his  mustache,  the  cock  of  the  turban,  and  the  amplitude 
of  his  sash,  all  suggest  the  fighting  man.  The  strange  close- 
ness of  the  likeness  of  the  Hungarians  to  the  Sikhs  would 
lead  one  to  think  that  the  races  are  identical.  Not  only  arc 
they  alike  in  build,  look,  and  warlike  habits,  but  they  brush 
their  beards  in  the  same  fashion,  and  these  little  customs  en- 
dure longer  than  manners — longer,  often,  than  religion  itself. 
One  of  the  crowd  was  a  ruddy-faced,  red-bearded,  Judas-hair- 
ed fellow,  that  looked  every  inch  a  Fenian,  and  might  have 
stepped  here  from  the  Kilkenny  wilds ;  but  the  majority  of 
the  Sikhs  had  aquiline  noses  and  fine  features,  so  completely 
Jewish  of  the  best  and  oldest  type  that  I  was  reminded  of  Sir 


4:64:  Greater  Britain. 

William  Jones's  fanciful  derivation  of  the  Afghan  races  from 
the  lost  Ten  Tribes  of  Israel.  It  may  be  doubted  whether 
the  Sikhs,  Afghans,  Persians,  ancient  Assyrians,  Jews,  ancient 
Scythians,  and  Magyars  were  not  all  originally  of  one  stock. 

In  India  dress  still  serves  the  purpose  of  denoting  rank. 
The  peasant  is  clothed  in  cotton,  the  prince  in  cloth  of  gold  ; 
and  even  religion,  caste,  and  occupation  are  distinguished  by 
their  several  well-known  and  unchanging  marks.  Indeed,  the 
fixity  of  fashion  is  as  singular  in  Hindostan  as  its  infinite 
changeableness  in  New  York  or  France.  The  patterns  we 
see  to-day  in  the  Bombay  bazar  are  those  which  were  popular 
in  the  days  of  Shah  Jehan.  This  regulation  of  dress  by  cus- 
tom is  one  of  the  many  difficulties  in  the  way  of  our  English 
manufactui-ers  in  their  Indian  ventures.  There  has  been  an 
attempt  made  lately  to  bring  about  the  commercial  annexation 
of  India  to  England :  Lancashire  is  to  manufacture  the  Ion- 
gee,  dhotee,  and  saree,  we  are  told ;  Nottingham  or  Paisley 
are  to  produce  us  shumlas  ;  Dacca  is  to  give  way  to  Norwich, 
and  Coventry  to  supersede  Jeypoor.  It  is  strange  that  men 
of  Indian  knowledge  and  experience  should  be  found  who  fail 
to  point  out  the  absurdity  of  our  entertaining  hopes  of  any 
great  trade  in  this  direction.  The  Indian  women  of  the 
humbler  castes  are  the  only  customers  we  can  hope  to  have  in 
India;  the  high-caste  people  wear  only  ornamented  fabrics, 
in  the  making  of  which  native  manufacturers  have  advantages 
which  place  them  out  of  the  reach  of  European  competition : 
cheap  labor ;  workmen  possessed  of  singular  culture,  and  of  a 
grace  of  expression  which  makes  their  commonest  productions 
poems  in  silk  and  velvet ;  perfect  knowledge  of  their  custom- 
ers' wTants  and  tastes ;  scrupulous  regard  to  caste  conservatism 
— all  these  are  possessed  by  the  Hindoo  manufacturer,  and 
absent  in  the  case  of  the  firms  of  Manchester  and  Ilochdale. 
As  a  rule,  all  Indian  dress  is  best  made  by  hand ;  only  the 
coarsest  and  least  ornamented  fabrics  can  be  largely  manufac- 
tured at  paying  rates  in  England.  As  for  the  clothing  of  the 
poorer  people,  the  men  for  the  most  part  Avear  nothing,  the 
women  little,  and  that  little  washed  often,  and  changed  never. 
Even  for  the  roughest  goods  we  can  not  hope  to  undersell  the 
native  manufacturers  by  much  in  the  Presidency  towns.  Up 
country,  if  we  enter  into  the  competition,  it  can  scarcely  fail 


Um  KITS  UK.  465 

to  be  a  losing  one.  England  is  not  more  unlikely  to  be  clothed 
from  India  than  India  from  Great  Britain.  If  European  ma- 
chinery is  needed,  it  will  be  erected  in  Yokohama  or  in  Bom- 
bay, not  in  the  West  Riding. 

It  is  hardly  to  be  believed  that  Englishmen  have  for  some 
years  been  attempting  to  induce  the  natives  to  adopt  our 
flower-patterns  —  peonies,  butterflies,  and  all.  Ornament  in 
India  is  always  subordinate  to  the  purpose  which  the  object 
has  to  serve.  Hindoo  art  begins  where  English  ends.  The 
principles  which  centuries  of  study  have  given  us  as  the  max- 
ims upon  which  the  grammar  of  ornament  is  based  are  those 
which  are  instinctive  in  every  native  workman.  Every  cos- 
tume, every  vase,  every  temple  and  bazar  in  India  gives  eye- 
witness that  there  is  truth  in  the  saw  that  the  finest  taste  is 
consistent  with  the  deepest  slavery  of  body,  with  the  utmost 
slavishness  of  mind.  A  Hindoo  of  the  lowest  caste  will  spurn 
the  gift  of  a  turban  or  a  loin-cloth  the  ornamentation  of  which 
consists  not  with  his  idea  of  symmetry  and  grace.  Nothing 
could  induce  a  Hindoo  to  clothe  himself  in  such  a  gaudy, 
masquerading  dress  as  maddens  a  Maori  with  delight  and  his 
friends  with  jealousy  and  mortification.  In  art  as  in  deport- 
ment, the  Hindoo  loves  harmony  and  quiet ;  and  dress  with 
the  Oriental  is  an  art :  there  is  as  much  feeling — as  deep 
poetry — in  the  curves  of  the  Hindoo  saree  as  in  the  outlines 
of  the  Taj. 

Umritsur  is  the  spiritual  capital  of  the  Sikhs,  and  the  Dur- 
bar Temple  in  the  centre  of  the  town  is  the  holiest  of  their 
shrines.  It  stands,  with  the  sunbeams  glancing  from  its  gild- 
ed roof,  in  the  middle  of  a  very  holy  tank,  filled  with  huge" 
weird  fish-monsters  that  look  as  though  they  fed  on  men,  and 
glare  at  you  through  cruel  eyes. 

Leaving  your  shoes  outside  the  very  precincts  of  the  tank, 
with  the  police  guard  that  Ave  have  stationed  there,  you  skirt 
one  side  of  the  water,  and  then  leave  the  mosaic  terrace  for  a 
still  more  gorgeous  causeway,  that,  bordered  on  either  side 
by  rows  of  golden  lamp-supporters,  carries  the  path  across 
toward  the  rich  pavilion,  the  walls  of  which  are  as  thickly 
spread  with  gems  as  are  those  of  Akbar's  palace.  Here  you 
are  met  by  a  bewildering  din,  for  under  the  inner  dome  sit 
worshipers  by  the  score,  singing  with  vigor  the  grandest  of 

U2 


-166  GltEATER    BlilTAIN. 

barbaric  airs  to  the  accompaniment  of  lyre,  harp,  and  tomtom, 
while  in  the  centre,  on  a  cushion,  is  a  long-bearded,  gray  old 
gooroo,  or  priest  of  the  Sikh  religion — a  creed  singularly  pure, 
though  little  known.  The  effect  of  the  scene  is  much  en- 
hanced by  the  beauty  of  the  surrounding  houses,  whose  oriel 
windows  overhang  the  tank,  that  the  Sikh  princes  may  watch 
the  evolutions  of  the  lantern-bearing  boats  on  nights  when  the 
temple  is  illuminated.  "When  seen  by  moonlight  the  tank  is 
a  very  picture  from  the  "Arabian  Nights." 

This  is  a  time  of  ferment  in  the  Sikh  religion.  A  carpen 
tor  named  Ram  Singh — a  man  with  all  that  combination  of 
shrewdness  and  imagination,  of  enthusiasm  and  worldliness, 
by  which  the  world  is  governed — another  Mohammed  or  Brig- 
ham  Young,  perhaps — has  preached  his  way  through  the  Pun- 
jaub,  infusing  his  own  energy  into  others,  and  has  drawn  away 
from  the  Sikh  Church  some  hundred  thousand  followers — re- 
formers— who  call  themselves  the  Kookas.  These  modern 
Anabaptists — for  many  are  disposed  to  look  upon  Ram  Singh 
as  another  John  of  Leyden — bind  themselves  by  some  terrible 
and  secret  oath,  and  the  Government  fear  that  reformation  of 
religion  is  to  be  accompanied  by  reformation  of  the  State  of 
a  kind  not  advantageous  to  the  English  power.  When  Ram 
Singh  lately  proclaimed  his  intention  of  visiting  the  Durbar 
Temple  the  gooroos  incited  the  Sikh  fanatics  to  attack  his 
men  with  clubs,  and  the  military  police  were  forced  to  inter- 
fere.    There  is  now,  however,  a  Kooka  temple  at  Lahore. 

In  spite  of  religious  ferment,  there  is  little  in  the  bazar  or 
temples  of  Umritsur  to  remind  one  of  the  times — only  some 
twenty  years  ago — when  the  Sikh  army  crossed  the  Sutlej, 
and  its  leaders  threatened  to  sack  Delhi  and  Calcutta,  and 
drive  the  English  out  of  India ;  it  is  impossible,  however,  to 
believe  that  there  is  no  under-current  in  existence.  Eighteen 
years  can  not  have  sufficed  to  extinguish  the  Sikh  nationality, 
and  the  men  who  beat  us  at  Chillian wallah  are  not  yet  dead, 
or  even  old.  When  the  Maharajah  Dhuleep  Singh  returned 
from  England  in  1864  to  bury  his  mother's  body  the  chiefs 
crowded  round  him  as  he  entered  Lahore,  and  besought  him 
to  resume  his  position  at  their  head.  His  answer  was  a 
haughty  "Jao  !"  ("  Begone  !")  If  the  Sikhs  are  to  rise  once 
more  they  will  look  elsewhere  for  their  leader. 


Lahoke.  467 


CHAPTER  XI. 

LAHORE. 

Crossing  in  a  railway  journey  of  an  hour  one  of  the  most 
fertile  districts  of  the  Punjaub,  I  was  struck  with  the  resem- 
blance of  the  country  to  South  Austi-alia :  in  each  great 
sweeps  of  wheat-growing  lands,  with  here  and  there  an  acacia 
or  mimosa  tree ;  in  each  a  climate  hot,  but  dry,  and  not  un- 
healthy— singularly  hot  here  for  a  tract  in  the  latitude  of 
Vicksburg,  near  which  the  Mississippi  is  sometimes  frozen. 

Through  groves  of  a  yellow-blossomed,  sweet-scented,  weep- 
ing acacia,  much  like  laburnum,  in  which  the  fortified  railway 
station  seems  out  of  place,  I  reached  the  tomb-surrounded 
garden  that  is  called  Lahore — a  city  of  promegranates,  olean- 
ders, hollyhocks,  and  roses.  The  date-groves  of  Lahore  are 
beautiful  beyond  description ;  especially  so  the  one  that  hides 
the  Agra  Bank. 

Lahore  matches  Umritsur  in  the  purity  of  its  Orientalism, 
Agra  in  the  strength  and  grandeur  of  its  walls  :  but  it  has  no 
Tank  Temple  and  no  Taj ;  the  Great  Mosque  is  commonplace, 
Ilunjeet  Singh's  tomb  is  tawdry,  and  the  far-famed  Shalimar 
Gardens  inferior  to  those  of  Pin j ore.  The  strangest  sight  of 
Lahore  is  its  new  railway  station — a  fortress  of  red  brick,  one 
of  many  which  are  rising  all  Over  India.  The  fortification 
of  the  railway  stations  is  decidedly  the  next  best  step  to  that 
of  having  no  forts  at  all. 

The  city  of  Lahore  is  surrounded  by  a  suburb  of  great 
tombs,  in  which  Europeans  have  in  many  cases  taken  up  their 
residence  by  permission  of  the  owner,  the  mausoleums  being, 
from  the  thickness  of  their  walls,  as  cool  as  cellars.  Some- 
times, however,  a  fanatical  relative  of  the  man  buried  in  the 
tomb  will  warn  the  European  tenant  that  he  will  die  within  a 
year — a  prophecy  which  poison  has  once  or  twice  brought  to 
its  fulfillment  in  the  neighborhood  of  Lahore  and  at  Moultan. 

Strolling  in  the  direction  of  the  Cabool  Gate,  I  came  on  the 
Lieutenant-governor  of  the  Punjaub  driving  in  an  open  car- 
riage drawn  by  camels ;  and  passing  out  on  to  the  plain,  I  met 


±6S  Greater  Britain. 

all  the  officers  in  garrison  returning  on  Persian  ponies  from  a 
game  at  the  Afghan  sport  of  "  hockey  upon  horseback,"  while  a 
little  farther  were  some  English  ladies  with  hawks.  Through- 
out the  Northern  Punjaub  a  certain  settling  down  in  comfort 
on  the  part  of  the  English  officials  is  to  be  remarked,  and  the 
adaptations  of  native  habits  to  English  uses,  of  which  I  had 
in  one  evening's  walk  the  three  examples  which  I  have  men- 
tioned, is  a  sign  of  a  tendency  toward  that  making  the  best  of 
things  which  in  a  newly-occupied  country  precedes  the  en- 
trance upon  a  system  of  permanent  abode.  Lahore  has  been 
a  British  city  for  nineteen  years,  Bombay  for  two  centuries 
and  more ;  yet  Lahore  is  far  more  English  than  Bombay. 

Although  there  are  as  yet  no  signs  of  English  settlement  in 
the  Punjaub,  still  the  official  community  in  many  a  Punjaub 
station  is  fast  becoming  colonial  in  its  type,  and  Indian  tradi- 
tions are  losing  ground.  English  wives  and  sisters  abound  in 
Lahore,  even  the  railway  and  canal  officials  having  brought 
out  their  families ;  and  during  the  cool  weather  race  meetings, 
drag-hunts,  cricket-matches,  and  croquet-parties  follow  one 
another  from  day  to  day,  and  Lahore  boasts  a  volunteer  corps. 
When  the  hot  season  comes  on  those  who  can  escape  to  the 
hills,  and  the  wives  and  children  of  those  who  can  not  go  run 
to  Dalhousie,  as  Londoners  do  to  Eastbourne. 

The  healthy  English  tone  of  the  European  communities  of 
Umritsur  and  Lahore  is  reflected  in  the  newspapers  of  the 
Punjaub,  which  are  the  best  in  India,  although  the  blunders 
of  the  native  printers  render  the  "  betting  news  "  unintelligi- 
ble, and  the  "  cricket  scores  "  obscure.  The  columns  of  the 
Lahore  papers  present  as  singular  a  mixture  of  incongruous 
articles  as  even  the  Government  Gazette  offers  to  its  readers. 
An  official  notice  that  it  will  be  impossible  to  allow  more  than 
5 GO  elephants  to  take  part  in  the  next  Lucknow  procession 
follows  a  report  of  the  "  ice  meeting "  of  the  community  of 
Lahore  to  arrange  about  the  next  supply ;  and  side  by  side 
with  this  is  an  article  on  the  Punjaub  trade  with  Chinese 
Tartary,  which  recommends  the  Government  of  India  to  con- 
quer Afghanistan,  and  to  re-occupy  the  valley  of  Cashmere. 
A  paragraph  notices  the  presentation  by  the  Punjaub  Gov- 
ernment to  a  native  gentleman,  who  has  built  a  serai  at  his 
own  cost,  of  a  valuable  gift;  another  records  a  brush  with  the 


Lahore.  469 

Wagheers.  The  only  police  case  is  the  infliction  on  a  sweeper 
of  a  fine  of  thirty  rupees  for  letting  his  donkey  run  against  a 
high-caste  woman,  whereby  she  was  defiled;  but  a  European 
magistrate  reprimands  a  native  pleader  for  appearing  in  court 
with  his  shoes  on ;  and  a  notice  from  the  lieutenant-governor 
gives  a  list  of  the  holidays  to  be  observed  by  the  courts,  in 
which  the  "  Queen's  Birthday  "  comes  between  "  Bhudur  Ka- 
lee"  and  "  Oors  data  Gunjbuksh,"  while  "  Christmas"  follows 
"Shubberat,"  and  "Ash  Wednesday"  precedes  "Holee." 
As  one  of  the  holidays  lasts  a  fortnight,  and  many  more  than 
a  week,  the  total  number  of  dies  non  is  considerable ;  but  a 
postscript  decrees  that  additional  local  holidays  shall  be  grant- 
ed for  fairs  and  festivals,  and  for  the  solar  and  lunar  eclipse, 
which  brings  the  no-court  days  up  to  sixty  or  seventy,  besides 
those  in  the  Long  Vacation.  The  Hindoos  are  in  the  happy 
position  of  having  also  six  New  Year's  Days  in  every  twelve- 
month ;  but  the  editor  of  one  of  the  Lahore  papers  says  that 
his  Mohammedan  compositors  manifest  a  singular  interest  in 
Hindoo  feasts,  which  shows  a  gratifying  spread  of  toleration ! 
An  article  on  the  "  Queen's  English  in  Hindostan,"  in  the  Pun- 
jaub  Times,  gives,  as  a  specimen  of  the  poetry  of  Young 
Bengal,  a  serenade  in  which  the  skylark  carols  on  the  prim- 
rose bush.     "  Emerge  my  love,"  the  poet  cries  : 

"The  fragrant,  dewy  grove 
We'll  wander  through  till  gun-fire  bids  us  part." 

But  the  final  stanza  is  the  best : 

"  Then,  Leila,  come  !  nor  longer  cogitate ; 
Thy  egress  let  no  scruples  dire  retard  ; 
Contiguous  to  the  portals  of  thy  gate 
Suspensively  I  supplicate  regard." 

The  advertisements  range  from  books  on  the  lano-uao-es  of 
Dardistan  to  Government  contracts  for  elephant  fodder,  or 
price-lists  of  English  beer ;  and  an  announcement  of  an  Afghan 
history  in  the  Urdu  tongue  is  followed  by  a  prospectus  of  Berk- 
hampstead  Grammar  School.  King  Edward  would  rub  his 
eyes  were  he  to  wake  and  find  himself  being  advertised  in 
Lahore. 

The  Punjaub  Europeans,  with  their  English  newspapers 
and  English  ways,  are  strange  governors  for  an  empire  con- 
quered from  the  bravest  of  all  Eastern  races  little  more  thrfn 


470  Greater  Britain. 

eighteen  years  ago.  One  of  them,  taking  up  a  town  police- 
man's staff,  said  to  me  one  day,  "  Who  could  have  thought 
in  1850  that  in  1867  we  should  be  ruling  the  Sikhs  with  this  ?" 


CHAPTER  XII. 

OUR    INDIAN    ARMY. 

During  my  stay  in  Lahore  a  force  of  Sikhs  and  Pathans 
was  being  raised  for  service  at  Hong  Kong  by  an  officer  stay- 
ing in  the  same  hotel  with  myself,  and  a  large  number  of  men 
were  being  enlisted  in  the  city  by  recruiting  parties  of  the  Bom- 
bay army.  In  all  parts  of  India  we  are  now  relying,  so  far  as 
our  native  forces  are  concerned,  upon  the  men  who  only  a  few 
years  back  were  by  much  our  most  dangerous  foes. 

Throughout  the  East  subjects  concern  themselves  but  little 
in  the  quarrels  of  their  princes,  and  the  Sikhs  are  no  exception 
to  the  rule.  They  fought  splendidly  in  the  Persian  ranks  at 
Marathon;  under  Shere  Singh  they  made  their  memorable 
stand  at  Chillionwallah ;  but  under  Nicholson  they  beat  the 
bravest  of  the  Bengal  sepoys  before  Delhi.  Whether  they 
fight  for  us  or  against  us  is  all  one  to  them.  They  fight  for 
those  who  pay  them,  and  have  no  politics  beyond  their  pock- 
ets. So  far,  they  seem  useful  allies  to  us,  who  hold  the  purse 
of  India.  Unable  to  trust  Hindoos  with  arms,  we  can  at  least 
rule  them  by  the  employment  as  soldiers  of  their  fiercest  ene- 
mies. 

When  we  come  to  look  carefully  at  our  system  its  morality 
is  hardly  clear.  As  we  administer  the  revenues  of  India  nom- 
inally at  least,  for  the  benefit  of  the  Indians,  it  might  be  ar- 
gued that  we  may  fairly  keep  on  foot  such  troops  as  are  best 
fitted  to  secure  her  against  attack;  but  the  argument  breaks 
down  when  it  is  remembered  that  70,000  British  troops  are 
maintained  in  India  from  the  Indian  revenues  for  that  pur- 
pose, and  that  local  order  is  secured  by  an  ample  force  of  mil- 
itary police.  Even  if  the  employment  of  Sikhs  in  times  of 
emergency  may  be  advisable,  it  can  not  be  denied  that  the  day 
has  gone  by  for  permanently  overawing  a  people  by  means  of 
standing  armies  composed  of  their  hereditary  foes. 

In  discussing  the  question  of  the  Indian  armies  we  havo 


Our  Indian  Army.  471 

carefully  to  distinguish  between  the  theory  and  the  practice. 
The  Indian  official  theory  says  that  not  only  is  the  native  army 
a  valuable  auxiliary  to  the  English  army  in  India,  but  that 
its  moral  effect  on  the  people  is  of  great  benefit  to  us,  inas- 
much as  it  raises  their  self-respect,  and  offers  a  career  to  men 
who  would  otherwise  be  formidable  enemies.  The  practice 
proclaims  that  the  native  troops  are  either  dangerous  or  use- 
less by  arming  them  with  weapons  as  antiquated  as  the  bow 
and  arrow,  destroys  the  moral  effect  which  might  possibly  be 
produced  by  a  Hindoo  force  by  filling  the  native  ranks  with 
Sikh  and  Goorkha  aliens  and  heretics,  and  makes  us  enemies 
without  number  by  denying  to  natives  that  promotion  which 
the  theory  holds  out  to  them.  The  existing  system  is  official- 
ly defended  by  the  most  contradictory  arguments,  and  on  the 
most  shifting  of  grounds.  Those  who  ask  why  we  should  not 
trust  the  natives,  at  all  events  to  the  extent  of  allowing  Ben- 
gal and  Bombay  men  to  serve,  and  to  serve  with  arms  that 
they  can  use,  in  bodies  which  profess  to  be  the  Bengal  and 
Bombay  armies,  but  which  in  fact  are  Sikh  regiments  which 
we  are  afraid  to  arm,  are  told  that  the  native  army  has  muti- 
nied times  without  end,  that  it  has  never  fought  Avell  except 
where,  from,  the  number  of  British  present,  it  had  no  choice 
but  to  fight,  and  that  it  is  dangerous  and  inefficient.  Those 
who  ask  why  this  shadow  of  a  native  army  should  be  retained 
are  told  that  its  records  of  distinguished  service  in  old  times 
are  numerous  and  splendid.  The  huge  British  force  main- 
tained in  India,  and  the  still  linger  native  army,  are  each  of 
them  made  an  excuse  for  the  retention  of  the  other  at  the  ex- 
isting standard.  If  you  say  that  it  is  evident  that  70,000  Brit- 
ish troops  can  not  be  needed  in  India,  you  are  told  that  they 
are  required  to  keep  the  120,000  native  troops  in  check.  If 
you  ask,  Of  what  use,  then,  are  the  latter?  you  hear  that  in  the 
case  of  a  serious  imperial  war  the  English  troops  would  be 
withdrawn,  and  the  defense  of  India  confided  to  these  very 
natives  who  in  time  of  peace  require  to  be  thus  severely  held 
in  check.  Such  shallow  arguments  would  be  instantly  exposed 
were  not  English  statesmen  bribed  by  the  knowledge  that 
their  acceptance  as  good  logic  allows  us  to  maintain  at  India's 
cost  70,000  British  soldiers,  who  in  time  of  danger  would  be 
available  for  our  defense  at  home. 


472  Greater  Britain. 

That  the  English  force  of  70,000  men  maintained  in  India 
in  time  of  peace  can  be  needed  there  in  peace  or  war  is  not  to 
be  supposed  by  those  who  remember  that  10,000  men  were 
all  that  were  really  needed  to  suppress  the  wide-spread  mutiny 
of  1857,  and  that  Russia — our  only  possible  enemy  from  with- 
out— never  succeeded  during  a  two  years'  war  in  her  own  ter- 
ritory in  placing  a  disposable  army  of  00,000  men  in  the  Cri- 
mea. Another  mutiny  such  as  that  of  1857  is,  indeed,  impos- 
sible, now  that  we  retain  both  forts  and  artillery  exclusively 
in  British  hands  ;  and  Russia  having  to  bring  her  supplies  and 
men  across  almost  boundless  deserts,  or  through  hostile  Af- 
ghanistan, would  be  met  at  the  Khyber  by  our  whole  Indian 
army,  concentrated  from  the  most  distant  stations  at  a  few 
clays'  notice,  lighting  in  a  well-known  and  friendly  country, 
and  supplied  from  the  plains  of  all  India  by  the  railroads. 
Our  English  troops  in  India  are  sufficiently  numerous,  were  it 
necessary,  to  fight  both  the  Russians  and  our  native  army ; 
but  it  is  absurd  that  we  should  maintain  in  India,  in  a  time  of 
perfect  peace,  at  a  yearly  cost  to  the  people  of  that  country 
of  from  fourteen  to  sixteen  millions  sterling,  an  army  fit  to 
cope  with  the  most  tremendous  disasters  that  could  overtake 
the  country,  and  at  the  same  time  unspeakably  ridiculous  that 
we  should  in  all  our  calculations  be  forced  to  set  down  the 
native  army  as  a  cause  of  weakness.  The  native  rulers,  more- 
over, whatever  their  unpopularity  with  their  people,  were  al- 
ways able  to  array  powerful  levies  against  enemies  from  with- 
out ;  and  if  our  government  of  India  is  not  a  miserable  failure, 
our  influence  over  the  lower  classes  of  the  people  ought,  at  the 
least,  to  be  little  inferior  to  that  exercised  by  the  Mogul  em- 
perors or  the  Maratta  chiefs. 

As  for  local  risings,  concentration  of  our  troops  by  means 
of  the  railroads  that  would  be  constructed  in  half  a  dozen 
years  out  of  our  military  savings  alone,  and  which  American 
experience  shows  us  can  not  be  effectually  destroyed,  would 
be  amply  sufficient  to  deal  with  them  were  the  force  reduced 
to  30,000  men  :  and  a  general  rebellion  of  the  people  of  India 
we  have  no  reason  to  expect,  and  no  right  to  resist  should  it 
by  any  combination  of  circumstances  be  brought  about. 

The  taxation  required  to  maintain  the  present  Indian  army 
presses  severely  upon  what  is  in  fact  the  poorest  country  in 


Our  Indian  Army.  473 

the  world ;  the  yearly  drain  of  many  thousand  men  weighs 
heavily  upon  us;  and  our  system  seems  to  proclaim  to  the 
world  the  humiliating  fact  that  under  British  government, 
and  in  times  of  peace,  the  most  docile  of  all  peoples  need  an 
army  of  200,000  men,  in  addition  to  the  military  police,  to 
watch  them,  or  keep  them  down. 

Whatever  the  decision  come  to  with  regard  to  the  details 
of  the  changes  to  be  made  in  the  Indian  army  system,  it  is  at 
least  clear  that  it  will  be  expedient  in  us  to  reduce  the  En- 
glish army  in  India  if  Ave  intend  it  for  India's  defense,  and 
our  duty  to  abolish  it  if  we  intend  it  for  our  own.  It  is  also 
evident  that,  after  allowing  for  mere  police  duties — which 
should  in  all  cases  be  performed  by  men  equipped  as,  and 
called  by  the  name  of,  police — the  native  army  should,  what- 
ever its  size,  be  rendered  as  effective  as-  possible  by  instruc- 
tion in  the  use  of  the  best  weapons  of  the  age.  If  local  in- 
surrections have  unfortunately  to  be  quelled,  they  must  be 
quelled  by  English  troops  ;  and  against  European  invaders, 
natives  troops,  to  be  of  the  slightest  service,  must  be  armed 
as  Europeans.  As  the  possibility  of  European  invasion  is  re- 
mote, it  would  probably  be  advisable  that  the  native  army 
should  be  gradually  reduced  until  brought  to  the  point  of 
merely  supplying  the  body-guards  and  ceremonial-troops  ;  at 
at  all  events,  the  practice  of  overawing  Sikhs  with  Hindoos, 
and  Hindoos  with  Sikhs,  should  be  abandoned  as  inconsistent 
with  the  nature  of  our  government  in  India,  and  with  the  first 
principles  of  freedom. 

There  is,  however,  no  reason  why  we  should  wholly  de- 
prive ourselves  of  the  services  of  the  Indian  warrior  tribes. 
If  we  are  to  continue  to  hold  such  outposts  as  Gibraltar,  the 
duty  of  defending  them  against  all  comers  might  not  improp- 
erly be  intrusted  wholly  or  partly  to  the  Sikhs  or  fiery  little 
Goorkhas,  on  the  ground  that,  while  almost  as  brave  as  Eu- 
ropean troops,  they  are  somewhat  cheaper.  It  is  possible, 
indeed,  that,  just  as  we  draw  our  Goorkhas  from  independ- 
ent Nepaul,  other  European  nations  may  draw  Sikhs  from 
us.  We  are  not  even  now  the  only  riders  Avho  employ  Sikhs 
in  war ;  the  Khan  of  Kokand  is  said  to  have  many  in  his 
service  :  and,  tightly  ruled  at  home,  the  Punjaubees  may  not 
improbably  become  the  Swiss  of  Asia. 


474  Greater  Britain. 

"Whatever  the  European  force  to  be  maintained  in  India, 
it  is  clear  that  it  should  be  local.  The  queen's  army  system 
has  now  had  ten  years'  trial,  and  has  failed  in  every  point  in 
which  failure  was  prophesied.  The  officers,  hating  India,  and 
having  no  knowledge  of  native  languages  or  customs,  bring 
our  Government  into  contempt  among  the  people ;  recruits 
in  England  dread  enlistment  for  service  they  know  not  where ; 
and  Indian  tax-payers  complain  that  they  are  forced  to  sup- 
port an  army  over  the  disposition  of  which  they  have  not  the 
least  control,  and  which  in  time  of  need  would  probably  be 
withdrawn  from  India.  Even  the  Dutch,  they  say,  maintain 
a  purely  colonial  force  in  Java,  and  the  French  have  pledged 
themselves  that,  when  they  withdraw  the  Algerian  local 
troops,  they  will  replace  them  by  regiments  of  the  line.  En- 
gland and  Spain  alone  maintain  purely  imperial  troops  at  the 
expense  of  their  dependencies. 

Were  the  European  army  in  India  kept  separate  from  the 
English  service  it  would  be  at  once  less  costly  and  more  effi- 
cient, while  the  officers  would  be  acquainted  with  the  habits 
of  the  natives  and  customs  of  the  country,  and  not,  as  at 
present,  mere  birds  of  passage,  careless  of  offending  native 
prejudice,  indifferent  to  the  feelings  of  those  among  whom 
they  have  to  live,  and  occupied  each  day  of  their  idle  life  in 
heartily  wishing  themselves  at  home  again.  There  are,  in- 
deed, to  the  existing  system  drawbacks  more  serious  than 
have  been  mentioned.  Sufficient  stress  has  not  hitherto  been 
laid  upon  the  demoralization  of  our  army,  and  danger  to  our 
home  freedom  that  must  result  from  the  keeping  hi  India  of 
half  our  regular  force.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that  men  who 
have  periodically  to  go  through  such  scenes  as  those  of  1857, 
or  who  are  in  daily  contact  with  a  cringing  dark-skinned  race 
can  in  the  long  run  continue  to  be  firm  friends  to  constitu- 
tional liberty  at  home  ;  and  it  should  be  remembered  that  the 
English  troops  in  India,  though  under  the  orders  of  the  com- 
mander-in-chief, are  practically  independent  of  the  House  of 
Commons. 

It  is  not  only  constitutionally  that  Indian  rotation  service 
is  bad.  The  system  is  destructive  to  the  discipline  of  our 
troops,  and  a  separate  service  is  the  only  remedy. 


Russia.  -175 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

RUSSIA. 

Foe  fifty  years  or  more  Ave  have  been  warned  that  one  day 
we  must  encounter  Russia,  and  for  fifty  years  Muscovite  ar- 
mies, conquering  their  way  step  by  step,  have  been  advancing 
southward,  till  we  find  England  and  Russia  now  all  but  face 
to  face  in  Central  Asia. 

Steadily  the  Russians  are  advancing.  Their  circular  of 
1864,  in  which  they  declared  that  they  had  reached  their  wish- 
ed-for  frontier,  has  been  altogether  forgotten,  and  all  Kokand 
and  portions  of  Bokhara  have  been  swallowed  up,  while  our 
spies  in  St.  Petersburg  tell  the  Indian  Council  that  Persia  her- 
self is  doomed.  Although,  however,  the  distance  of  the  Rus- 
sian from  the  English  frontiers  has  been  greatly  reduced  of 
late,  it  is  still  far  more  considerable  than  is  supposed.  Instead 
of  the  Russian  outposts  being  100  miles  from  Peshawur,  as 
one  alarmist  has  said,  they  are  still  400 ;  and  Samarcand,  their 
nearest  city,  is  450  miles  in  a  straight  line  over  the  summit 
of  the  Hindoo  Koosh,  and  750  by  road  from  our  frontier  at 
the  Khyber.  At  the  same  time  we  must,  in  our  calculations 
of  the  future,  assume  that  a  few  years  will  see  Russia  at  the 
northern  base  of  the  Hindoo  Koosh,  and  in  a  position  to  over- 
run Persia  and  take  Herat. 

It  has  been  proposed  that  we  should  declare  to  Russia 
our  intention  to  preserve  Afghanistan  as  neutral  ground ;  but 
there  arises  this  difficulty,  that  having  agreed  to  this  plan,  Rus- 
sia would  immediately  proceed  to  set  about  ruling  Afghan- 
istan through  Persia.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  impossible, 
as  we  have  already  found,  to  treat  with  Afghanistan,  as  there 
is  no  Afghanistan  with  which  to  treat ;  nor  can  we  enter  into 
friendly  relations  with  any  Afghan  chief,  lest  his  neighbor  and 
enemy  should  hold  us  responsible  for  his  acts.  If  we  are  to 
have  any  dealings  with  the  Afghans  we  shall  soon  be  forced  to 
take  a  side,  and  necessarily  to  fight  and  conquer,  but  at  a  great 
cost  in  men  and  money.  It  might  be  possible  to  make  friends 
of  some  of  the  frontier  tribes  by  giving  them  lands  within  our 


476  Greater  Britain. 

borders  on  condition  of  their  performing  military  service  and 
respecting  the  lives  and  property  of  our  merchants ;  but  the 
policy  would  be  costly,  and  its  results  uncertain,  while  we 
should  probably  soon  find  ourselves  embroiled  in  Afghan  pol- 
itics. Moreover,  meddling  in  Afghanistan,  long  since  proved 
to  be  a  foolish  and  a  dangerous  course,  can  hardly  be  made  a 
wise  one  by  the  fact  of  the  Russians  being  at  the  gate. 

Many  would  have  us  advance  to  Herat,  on  the  ground  that 
it  is  in  Afghanistan,  and  not  on  the  plains  of  India,  that  Rus- 
sia must  be  met ;  but  such  is  the  fierceness  of  the  Afghans, 
such  the  poverty  of  their  country,  that  its  occupation  would 
be  at  once  a  source  of  weakness  and  a  military  trap  to  the  in- 
vader. Were  we  to  occupy  Herat,  we  should  have  Persians 
and  Afghans  alike  against  us;  were  the  Russians  to  annex 
Afghanistan,  they  could  never  descend  into  the  plains  of  India 
without  a  little  diplomacy  or  a  little  money  from  us  bringing 
the  Afghan  fanatics  upon  their  rear.  When,  indeed,  we  look 
carefully  into  the  meaning  of  those  Anglo-Indians  who  would 
have  us  repeat  our  attempt  to  thrash  the  Afghans  into  loving 
us,  we  find  that  the  pith  of  their  complaint  seems  to  be  that 
battles  and  conquests  mean  promotion,  and  that  we  have  no 
one  left  in  India  upon  whom  we  can  wage  war.  Civilians 
look  for  new  appointments,  military  men  for  employment, 
missionaries  for  fresh  fields,  and  all  see  their  opening  in  an- 
nexation, while  the  newspapers  echo  the  cry  of  their  readers, 
and  call  on  the  viceroy  to  annex  Afghanistan  "  at  the  cost 
of  impeachment." 

Were  our  frontier  at  Peshawur  a  good  one  for  defense 
there  could  be  but  little  reason  shown  for  an  occupation  of 
any  part  of  Afghanistan ;  but  as  it  is,  the  question  of  the  de- 
sirability of  an  advance  is  complicated  by  the  lamentable 
weakness  of  our  present  frontier.  Were  Russia  to  move 
down  upon  India  we  should  have  to  meet  her  either  in  Af- 
ghanistan or  upon  the  Indus :  to  meet  her  at  Peshawur,  at  the 
foot  of  the  mountains  and  with  the  Indus  behind  us,  would 
be  a  military  suicide.  Of  the  two  courses  that  would  be  open 
to  us,  a  retreat  to  the  Indus  would  be  a  terrible  blow  to  the 
confidence  of  our  troops,  and  an  advance  to  Cabool  or  Herat 
would  be  an  advance  out  of  reach  of  our  railroad  communica- 
tions and  through  a  dangerous  defile.     To  maintain  our  fron- 


Russia.  477 

tier  force  at  Peshawur,  as  we  now  do,  is  to  maintain  in  a  pes- 
tilential valley  a  force  which,  if  attacked,  could  not  fight 
where  it  is  stationed,  but  would  be  forced  to  advance  into 
Afghanistan  or  retreat  to  the  Indus.  The  best  policy  would 
probably  be  to  withdraw  the  Europeans  from  Peshawur  and 
Rawul  Pindee,  and  place  them  upon  the  Indus  in  the  hills 
near  Attock,  completing  our  railroad  from  Attock  to  Lahore, 
and  from  Attock  to  the  hill  station,  and  to  leave  the  native 
force  to  defend  the  Khyber  and  Peshawur  against  the  mount- 
ain tribes.  We  should  also  encourage  European  settlement 
in  the  valley  of  Cashmere.  On  the  other  hand,  we  should 
push  a  short  railroad  from  the  Indus  to  the  Bholan  Pass,  and 
there  concentrate  a  second  powerful  European  force,  with  a 
view  to  resisting  invasion  at  that  point,  and  of  taking  in  flank 
and  rear  any  invader  who  might  advance  upon  the  Khyber. 
The  Bholan  Pass  is,  moreover,  on  the  road  to  Candahar  and 
Herat ;  and,  although  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  occupy  those 
cities  except  by  the  wish  of  the  Afghans,  still  the  advance  of 
the  Russians  will  probably  one  day  force  the  Afghans  to  ally 
themselves  to  us,  and  solicit  the  occupation  of  their  cities. 
The  fact  that  the  present  ruler  of  Herat  is  a  mere  tool  of  the 
Persians  or  feudatory  of  the  Czar,  will  have  no  effect  what- 
ever on  his  country,  for  if  he  once  threw  himself  openly  into 
Russian  hands,  his  people  would  immediately  desert  him.  So 
much  for  the  means  of  defense  against  the  Russians ;  but  there 
is  some  chance  that  we  may  have  to  defend  India  against  an- 
.  other  Mohammedan  invasion,  secretly  countenanced,  but  not 
openly  aided  by  Russia.  While  on  my  way  to  England  I  had 
a  conversation  on  this  matter  with  a  well-informed  Syrian 
Pacha,  but  notorious  Russian-hater.  He  had  been  telling  me 
that  Russian  policy  had  not  changed,  but  was  now,  as  ever, 
a  policy  of  gradual  annexation  ;  that  she  envied  our  position  in 
India,  and  hated  us  because  our  gentle  treatment  of  Asiatics 
is  continually  held  up  to  her  as  an  example.  "  Russia  has  at- 
tacked you  twice  in  India,  and  will  attack  you  there  again,"  he 
said.  Admitting  her  interference  in  the  Afghan  war,  I  denied 
that  it  was  proved  that  she  had  any  influence  in  Hindostan,  or 
any  hand  in  the  rebellion  of  1857.  My  friend  made  me  no 
spoken  answer,  but  took  four  caskets  that  stood  upon  the  ta- 
ble, and  setting  them  in  a  row,  with  an  interval  between  them, 


478  Greater  Britain. 

pushed  the  first  so  that  it  struck  the  second,  the  second  the 
third,  and  the  third  the  fourth.  Then,  looking  up,  he  said, 
"  There  you  have  the  manner  of  the  Russian  move  on  India. 
I  push  No.  1,  but  you  see  No.  4  moves.  1  influences  2,  2  in- 
fluences 3,  and  3  influences  4 ;  but  1  doesn't  influence  4.  Oh, 
dear  me,  no  !  Very  likely  even  1  and  3  are  enemies,  and  hate 
each  other ;  and  if  3  thought  that  she  was  doing  l's  work,  she 
would  kick  over  the  traces  at  once.  Nevei'theless,  she  is 
doing  it.  In  1857  Russia  certainly  struck  at  you  through 
Egypt,  and  probably  through  Central  Asia  also.  Lord  Pal 
merston  was  afraid  to  send  troops  through  Egypt,  though  if 
that  could  have  been  largely  done,  the  mutiny  could  have 
been  put  down  in  half  the  time,  and  with  a  quarter  the  cost ; 
and  Nana  Sahib  in  his  proclamation  stated,  not  without  reason, 
that  Egypt  was  on  his  side.  The  way  you  are  being  now  at- 
tacked is  this :  Russia  and  Egypt  are  for  the  moment  hand 
and  glove,  though  their  ultimate  objects  are  conflicting. 
Egypt  is  playing  for  the  leadership  of  all  Islam,  even  of  Mos- 
lems in  Central  Asia  and  India.  Russia  sees  that  this  game  is 
for  the  time  her  game,  as  through  Egypt  she  can  excite  the 
Turcomans,  Afghans,  and  other  Moslems  of  Central  Asia  to 
invade  India  in  the  name  of  religion  and  the  prophet,  but,  in 
fact,  in  the  hope  of  plunder,  and  can,  also  at  the  same  time 
raise  your  Mohammedan  population  in  Ilindostan  —  a  popu- 
lation over  which  you  admit  you  have  absolutely  no  hold.  Of 
course  you  will  defeat  these  hordes  whenever  you  meet  them 
in  the  field ;  but  their  numbers  are  incalculable,  and  their  brav- 
ery great.  India  has  twice  before  been  conquered  from  the 
north,  from  Central  Asia,  and  you  must  remember  that  behind 
these  hordes  comes  Russia  herself.  Mohammedanism  is  weak 
here,  on  the  Mediterranean,  I  grant  you ;  but  it  is  very  strong 
in  Central  Asia — as  strong  as  it  ever  was.  Can  you  trust 
your  Sikhs,  too  ?     I  doubt  it," 

When  I  asked  the  Pacha  how  Egypt  was  to  put  herself  at 
the  head  of  Islam,  he  answered,  "  Thus.  We  Egyptians  are 
already  supporting  the  Turkish  Empire.  Our  tribute  is  a 
million  (francs),  but  we  pay  five  millions,  of  which  four  go 
into  the  Sultan's  privy  purse.  We  have  all  the  leading  men 
of  Turkey  in  our  pay:  30,000  of  the  best  troops  serving  in 
Crete,  and  the  whole  of  the  fleet  are  contributed  by  Egypt. 


Russia.  479 

Now  Egypt  had  no  small  share  in  getting  up  the  Cretan  in- 
surrection, and  yet,  you  see,  she  does,  or  pretends  to  do,  her 
best  to  put  it  down.  The  Sultan,  therefore,  is  at  the  vice- 
roy's mercy,  if  you  don't  interfere.  No  one  else  will  if  you 
do  not.  The  viceroy  aims  at  being  nominally,  as  he  is  real- 
ly, '  the  Grand  Turk.'  Once  Sultan,  with  Crete  and  the  other 
islands  handed  over  to  Greece  or  Russia,  the  present  viceroy 
commands  the  allegiance  of  every  Moslem  people — thirty  mil- 
lions of  your  Indian  subjects  included ;  that  is,  practically 
Russia  commands  that  allegiance — Russia  practically,  though 
not  nominally,  at  Constantinople  wields  the  power  of  Islam, 
instead  of  being  hated  by  every  true  believer,  as  she  would  be 
if  she  annexed  Turkey  in  Europe.  Her  real  game  is  a  far 
grander  one  than  that  with  which  she  is  credited."  "  Turkey 
is  your  vassal,"  the  Pacha  went  on  to  say ;  "  she  owes  her  ex- 
istence entirely  to  you.  Why  not  use  her  then  ?  Why  not 
put  pressure  on  the  Sultan  to  exert  his  influence  over  the 
Asian  tribes — which  is  far  greater  than  you  believe — for  your 
benefit  ?  Why  not  insist  on  your  Euphrates  route  ?  Why 
not  insist  on  Egypt  ceasing  to  intrigue  against  you,  and  an- 
nex the  country  if  she  continues  in  her  present  course  ?  If 
you  wish  to  bring  matters  to  a  crisis,  make  Abdul  Aziz  insist 
on  Egypt  being  better  governed,  or  on  the  slave-trade  being 
put  down.  You  have  made  your  name  a  laughing-stock  here. 
You  let  Egypt  half  bribe,  half  force  Turkey  into  throwing 
such  obstacles  in  the  way  of  your  Euphrates  route  that  it  is 
no  nearer  completion  now  than  it  ever  was.  You  force  Egypt 
to  pass  a  law  abolishing  the  slave-trade  and  slavery  itself,  and 
you  have  taken  no  notice  of  the  fact  that  this  law  has  never 
been  enforced  in  so  much  as  a  single  instance.  You  think 
that  you  are  all  right  now  that  you  have  managed  to  force 
our  Government  into  allowing  your  troops  to  pass  to  and  fro 
through  Egypt,  thus  making  your  road  through  the  territory 
■of  your  most  dangerous  enemy.  Where  would  you  be  in 
ease  of  a  Avar  with  Russia  ?"  . 

When  I  pleaded  that,  if  we  were  refused  passage,  we 
should  occupy  the  country,  the  Pacha  replied,  "  Of  course 
you  would ;  but  you  need  not  imagine  that  you  will  ever  be 
refused  passage.  What  will  happen  will  be  that,  just  at  the 
time  of  your  greatest  need,  the  Hoods  "will  come  down  from 


480  Greater  Britain. 

the  mountains,  and  wash  away  ten  miles  of  the  line,  and  all 
the  engines  will  go  out  of  repair.  You  will  complain :  we 
shall  offer  to  lay  the  stick  about  the  feet  of  all  the  emjrtoy'es 
of  the  line.  What  more  would  you  have  ?  Can  we  prevent 
the  floods?  When  our  Government  wished  to  keep  your 
Euphrates  scheme  from  coming  to  any  thing,  did  they  say, 
'  Do  this  thing,  and  we  will  raise  Islam  against  you  V  Oh 
no !  they  just  bribed  your  surveyors  to  be  attacked  by  the 
Bedouin,  or  they  bribed  a  pacha  to  tell  you  that  the  water 
was  alkaline  and  poisonous  for  the  next  hundred  miles,  and 
so  on,  till  your  company  was  ruined,  and  the  plan  at  an  end 
for  some  years.  Your  Home  Government  does  not  under- 
stand us  Easterns.  Why  don't  you  put  your  Eastern  affairs 
into  the  hands  of  your  Indian  Government  ?  You  have  two 
routes  to  India — Egypt  and  Euphrates  Valley,  and  both  are 
practically  in  the  hands  of  your  only  great  enemy — Russia." 

In  all  that  my  Syrian  friend  said  of  the  danger  of  our  re- 
lying too  much  upon  our  route  across  Egypt,  and  on  the  im- 
portance to  us  of  the  immediate  construction  of  the  Euphrates 
Valley  Railway  line,  there  is  nothing  but  truth,  but,  in  his 
fears  of  a  fresh  invasion  of  India  by  the  Mohammedans,  he 
forgot  that  for  fighting  purposes  the  Mohammedans  are  no 
longer  one,  but  two  peoples  :  for  the  Moslem  races  are  di- 
vided into  Sonnites  and  Shiites,  or  orthodox  and  dissenting 
Mohammedans,  who  hate  each  other  far  more  fiercely  than 
they  hate  us.  Our  Indian  Moslems  are  orthodox,  the  Af- 
ghans and  Persians  are  dissenters,  the  Turks  are  orthodox. 
If  Egypt  and  Persia  play  Russia's  game,  we  may  count  upon 
the  support  of  the  Turks  of  Syria,  of  the  Euphrates  Valley, 
and  of  India.  To  unite  Irish  Catholics  and  Orangemen  in  a 
religious  crusade  against  the  English  would  be  an  easy  task 
by  the  side  of  that  of  uniting  Sonnite  and  Shiite  against 
India.  A  merely  Shiite  invasion  is  always  possible,  but  could 
probably  be  met  with  ease,  by  opposition  at  the  Khyber,  and 
resistance  upon  the  Indus,  followed  by  a  rapid  advance  from 
the  Bholan.  Russia  herself  is  not  without  her  difficulties 
with  the  strictest  and  most  fanatical  Mohammedans.  Now 
that  she  has  conquered  Bokhara,  their  most  sacred  land,  they 
hate  her  as  fiercely  as  they  hate  us.  The  crusade,  if  she  pro- 
vokes it,  may  be  upon  our  side,  and  British  commanders  in 


Russia.  481 

green  turbans  may  yet  summon  the  Faithful  to  arms,  and  in- 
voke the  Prophet. 

It  is  to  be  remarked  that  men  who  have  lived  long  in  India 
think  that  our  policy  in  the  East  has  overwhelming  claims  on 
the  attention  of  our  home  authorities.  Not  only  is  Eastern 
business  to  be  performed,  and  Eastern  intrigues  watched  care- 
fully, but  according  to  these  Indian  flies,  who  think  that  their 
Eastern  cart-wheel  is  the  world,  Oriental  policy  is  to  guide; 
home  policy,  to  dictate  our  European  friendships,  to  cause 
our  wars. 

No  Englishman  in  England  can  sympathize  with  the  ridic- 
ulous inability  to  comprehend  our  real  position  in  India  which 
leads  many  Anglo-Indians  to  cry  out  that  we  must  go  to  war 
with  Russia  to  "  keep  up  our  prestige ;"  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  need  hardly  be  shown  that,  apart  from  the  extension 
of  trade  and  the  improvement  of  communication,  we  need  not 
trouble  ourselves  with  alliances  to  strengthen  us  in  the  East. 
Supported  by  the  native  population,  we  can  maintain  our- 
selves in  India  against  the  world  ;  unsupported  by  them,  our 
rule  is  morally  indefensible,  and  therefore  not  long  to  be  re- 
tained by  force  of  arms. 

The  natives  of  India  watch  with  great  interest  the  advance 
of  Russia ;  not  that  they  believe  that  they  would  be  any  better 
off  under  her  than  under  us,  but  that  they  would  like,  at  all 
events,  to  see  some  one  thrash  us,  even  if  in  the  end  they  lost 
by  it;  just  as  a  boy  likes  to  see  a  new  bully  thrash  his  former 
master,  even  though  the  later  be.  also  the  severer  tyrant.  That 
the  great  body  of  the  people  of  India  watch  with  feverish  ex- 
citement the  advance  of  Russia  is  seen  from  the  tone  of  the 
native  press,  which  is  also  of  service  to  us  in  demonstrating 
that  the  mass  of  the  Hindoos  -are  incapable  of  appreciating 
the  benefits,  and  even  of  comprehending  the  character,  of  our 
rule.  They  can  understand  the  strength  which  a  steady  pur- 
pose gives  ;  they  can  not  grasp  the  principles  which  lie  at  the 
root  of  our  half-mercantile,  half-benevolent  despotism. 

No  native  believes  that  we  shall  permanently  remain  in  In- 
dia ;  no  native  really  sympathized  with  us  during  the  rebel- 
lion. To  the  people  of  India  Ave  English  are  a  mystery.  We 
profess  to  love  them,  and  to  be  educating  them  for  something 
they  can  not  comprehend,  which  Ave  call  freedom  and  self-gov- 

X 


482  Greater  Britain. 

eminent ;  in  the  mean  time,  while  we  do  not  plunder  them, 
nor  convert  them  forcibly,  after  the  wont  of  the  Mogul  em- 
perors, we  kick  and  cuff  them  all  round,  and  degrade  the  no- 
bles by  ameliorating  the  condition  of  humbler  men. 

No  mere  policy  of  disarmament  or  of  oppression  can  be 
worth  much  as  a  system  for  securing  lasting  peace ;  for  if  our 
Irish  constabulary  can  not  prevent  the  introduction  of  Fenian 
arms  to  Cork  and  Dublin,  how  doubly  impossible  must  it  be 
to  guard  a  frontier  of  five  or  six  thousand  miles  by  means  of 
a  police  force  which  itself  can  not  be  trusted  ?  That  prolong- 
ed disarmament  causes  our  subjects  to  forget  the  art  of  Avar 
is  scarcely  true,  and  if  true  would  tell  both  ways.  The  ques- 
tion is  not  one  of  disarmament  and  suppression  of  rebellion : 
it  is  that  of  whether  we  can  raise  up  in  India  a  people  that 
Avill  support  our  rule ;  and  if  this  is  to  be  done  there  must  be 
an  end  of  cuffing. 

Were  the  Hindoos  as  capable  of  appreciating  the  best 
points  of  our  government  as  they  are  of  pointing  out  the 
worst,  we  should  have  nothing  to  fear  in  comparison  with 
Russia.  Drunken,  dirty,  ignorant,  and  corrupt,  the  Russian 
people  are  no  fit  rulers  for  Hindostan.  Were  our  rival  that 
which  she  pretends  to  be — a  civilized  European  Power  with 
"  a  mission  "  in  the  East ;  were  she  even,  indeed,  an  enlight- 
ened commercial  Power,  with  sufficiently  benevolent  instincts, 
but  with  no  policy  outside  her  pocket,  such  as  England  was 
till  lately  in  the  East,  and  is  still  in  the  Pacific,  we  might  find 
ourselves  able  to  meet  her  with  open  arms,  and  to  bring  our- 
selves to  believe  that  her  advance  into  Southern  Asia  was  a 
gain  to  mankind.  As  it  is,  the  Russians  form  a  barbarous 
horde,  ruled  by  a  German  emperor  and  a  German  ministry, 
who,  however,  are  as  little  able  to  suppress  degrading  drunk- 
enness and  shameless  venality  as  they  are  themselves  desirous 
of  promoting  true  enlightenment  and  education.  "Talk  of 
Russian  civilization  of  the  East !"  an  Egyptian  once  said  to 
me ;  "  why,  Russia  is  an  organized  barbarism ;  why — the  Rus- 
sians are — why  they  are — why — nearly  as  bad  as  ice  are  !"  It 
should  be  remembered,  too,  that  Russia,  being  herself  an 
Asiatic  power,  can  never  introduce  European  civilization  into 
Asia.  All  the  cry  of  "  Russia  !  Russia  !"  all  this  magnifying 
of  the  Russian  power,  only  means  that  the  English,  being  the 


Eussia.  483 

strong  men  /most  hated  by  the  weak  men  of  Southern  Asia, 
the  name  of  the  next  strongest  is  used  to  terrify  them.  The 
offensive  strength  of  Russia  has  been  grossly  exaggerated  by 
alarmists,  who  forget  that,  if  Russia  is  to  be  strong  in  Bo- 
khara and  Khiva,  it  will  be  Bokharan  and  Khivau  strength. 
In  all  our  arguments  we  assume  that  with  three-fourths  of  her 
power  in  Asia,  and  with  her  armies  composed  of  Asians,  Rus- 
sia will  remain  a  European  Power.  Whatever  the  composi- 
tion of  her  forces,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  India  is  not  a 
stronger  empire  than  her  new  neighbor.  The  military  expend- 
iture of  India  is  equal  to  that  of  Russia ;  the  homogeneous- 
ness  of  the  Northern  Power  is  at  the  best  inferior  to  that  of 
India ;  India  has  twice  the  population  of  Russia,  five  times 
her  trade,  and  as  large  a  revenue.  To  the  miserable  military 
administration  of  Russia  Afghanistan  would  prove  a  second 
Caucasus,  and  by  their  conduct  we  see  that  the  Afghans  them- 
selves are  not  terrified  by  her  advance.  The  people  with 
whom  an  Asiatic  prince  seeks  alliances  are  not  those  whom  he 
most  fears.  That  the  Afghans  are  continually  intriguing  with 
Russia  against  us  merely  means  that  they  fear  us  more  than 
they  fear  Russia. 

Russia  will  one  day  find  herself  encountering  the  English 
or  Americans  in  China,  perhaps,  but  not  upon  the  plains  of 
Ilindostan.  "Wherever  and  whenever  the  contest  comes,  it 
can  have  but  one  result.  Whether  upon  India  or  on  England 
falls  the  duty  of  defense,  Russia  must  be  beaten.  A  country 
that  was  fifty  years  concpiering  the  Caucasus,  and  that  could 
never  place  a  disposable  force  of  60,000  men  in  the  Crimea, 
need  give  no  fear  to  India,  while  her  grandest  offensive  efforts 
would  be  ridiculed  by  America  or  by  the  England  of  to-day. 
To  meet  Russia  in  the  way  that  we  are  asked  to  meet  her 
means  to  meet  her  by  corruption,  and  a  system  of  meddling 
Eastern  diplomacy  is  proposed  to  us  which  is  revolting  to  our 
English  nature.  Let  us  by  all  means  go  our  own  way,  and 
let  Russia  go  hers.  If  we  try  to  meet  the  Russian  Orientals 
with  craft  we  shall  be  defeated ;  let  us  meet  them,  therefore, 
With  straightforwardness  and  friendship,  but,  if  necessary,  in 
arms. 

It  is  not  Russia  that  we  need  dread;  but  by  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  various  nationalities  in  Ilindostan  by  means  of 


484  Greater  Britain. 

centralization  and  of  railroads  we  have  created  an  India  which 
Ave  can  not  fight.  India  herself,  not  Russia,  is  our  danger, 
and  our  task  is  rather  to  conciliate  than  to  conquer. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

NATIVE    STATES. 


Quitting  Lahore  at  night,  I  travelled  to  Moultan  by  a  rail- 
way which  has  names  for  its  stations  such  as  India  can  not 
match.  Chunga-munga,  Wanrasharam,  Cheechawutnee,  and 
Chunnoo  follow  one  another  in  that  order.  During  the  night, 
when  I  looked  out  into  the  still  moonlight,  I  saw  only  desert, 
and  trains  of  laden  camels  pacing  noiselessly  over  the  waste 
sands;  but  in  the  morning  1  found  that  the  whole  country 
within  eye-shot  was  a  howling  wilderness.  Moultan,  renown- 
ed in  warlike  history  from  Alexander's  time  to  ours,  stands 
upon  the  edge  of  the  great  sandy  tract  once  known  as  the 
"  Desert  of  the  Indies."  In  every  village  bagpipes  were  play- 
ing through  the  live-long  night.  There  are  many  resem- 
blances to  the  Gaelic  races  to  be  found  in  India ;  the  Hindoo 
girl's  saree  is  the  plaid  of  the  Galway  peasantress,  or  of  the 
Trongate  fish-wife;  many  of  the  hill-tribes  wear  the  kilt; 
but  the  Punjaubee  pipes  are  like  those  of  the  Italian  pfiferari 
rather  than  those  of  the  Scotch  Highlander. 

The  great  sandy  desert  which  lies  between  the  Indus  and 
Rajpootana  has,  perhaps,  a  future  under  British  rule.  Wher- 
ever snowy  mountains  are  met  with  in  warm  countries,  yearly 
floods,  the  product  of  the  thaws,  sweep  down  the  rivers  that 
take  their  rise  in  the  glaciers  of  the  chain,  and  the  Indus  is 
no  exception  to  the  rule.  Were  the  fall  less  great,  the  stream 
less  swift,  Scinde  would  have  been  another  Cambodia,  another 
Egypt.  As  it  is,  the  fertilizing  floods  pour  through  the  deep 
river-bed  instead  of  covering  the  land,  and  the  silt  is  wasted 
on  the  Arabian  Gulf.  No  native  State  with  narrow  bound- 
aries can  deal  with  the  great  works  required  for  irrigation 
on  the  scale  that  can  alone  succeed ;  but  possessing  as  we  do 
the  country  from  the  defiles  whence  the  five  rivers  escape  into 
the  plains  to  the  sandy  bars  at  which  they  lose  themselves  in 
the  Indian  Seas,  we  might  convert  the  Punjaub  and  Scinde 


Native  States.  485 

into  a  garden  which  should  support  a  happy  population  of  a 
hundred  millions,  reared  under  our  rule,  and  the  best  of  bul- 
Avarks  against  invasion  from  the  north  and  west, 

At  Umritsur  I  had  seen  those  great  canals  that  are  com- 
mencing to  irrigate  and  fertilize  the  vast  deserts  that  stretch 
to  Scinde.  At  Jullundur  I  had  already  seen  their  handiwork 
in  the  fields  of  cotton,  tobacco,  and  wheat  that  blossom  in  the 
middle  of  a  wilderness;  and  if  the  whole  Punjaub  and  Indus 
Valley  can  be  made  what  Jullundur  is,  no  outlay  can  be  too 
costly  a  means  to  such  an  end.  There  can  be  no  reason  why, 
with  irrigation,  the  Indus  Valley  should  not  become  as  fertile 
as  the  Valley  of  the  Nile. 

After  admiring  in  Moultan,  on  the  one  hand,  the  grandeur 
of  the  citadel  which  still  shows  signs  of  the  terrible  bombard- 
ment which  it  suffered  at  our  hands  after  the  murder  by  the 
Sikhs  of  Mr.  Van  Agnew  in  1848,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
modesty  of  the  sensitive  mimosa,  which  grows  plentifully 
about  the  city,  I  set  off  by  railway  for  Sher  Shah,  the  point  at 
which  the  railway  comes  to  its  end  upon  the  banks  of  the 
united  Jhelum  and  Chenab,  tAvo  of  the  rivers  of  the  Punjaub. 
The  raihvay  comjiany  once  built  a  station  on  the  river-bank 
at  Sher  Shah,  but  the  same  summer,  Avhen  the  floods  came 
down,  station  and  railway  alike  disappeared  into  the  Indus. 
Embanking  the  river  is  impossible,  from  the  cost  of  the  Avorks 
Avhich  would  be  needed ;  and  building  Aving-dams  has  been 
tried,  Avith  the  remarkable  effect  of  sending  off  the  river  at 
right  angles  to  the  dam  to  devastate  the  country  opposite. 

The  railway  has  noAV  no  station  at  Sher  Shah,  but  the  In- 
dus steamer  captains  pick  out  a  good  place  to  lie  alongside 
the  bank,  and  the  rails  are  so  laid  as  to  hiring  the  trains  along- 
side the  ships.  After  seeing  nothing  but  flat  plains  from  the 
time  of  leaving  Umritsur,  I  caught  sight  from  Sher  Shah  of 
the  great  Sooleiman  chain  of  the  Afghan  Mountains,  rising  in 
black  masses  through  the  fiery  mist  that  fills  the  Indus  Valley. 

I  had  so  timed  my  arrival  on  board  the  river-boat  that  she 
sailed  the  next  morning,  and  after  a  day's  uneventful  steam- 
ing, Araried  by  much  running  aground,  when  we  anchored  in 
the  evening  Ave  Avere  in  the  native  State  of  Bhawulpore. 

While  we  AATere  wandering  about  the  river-shore  in  the 
evening,  I  and  my  two  or  three  European  felloAA'-travellers, 


486  Greater  Britain. 

we  met  a  native,  with  whom  one  of  our  number  got  into  con- 
versation. The  Englishman  had  heard  that  Bhawulpore  was 
to  be  annexed,  so  he  asked  the  native  whether  he  was  a  Brit- 
ish subject,  to  which  tho  answer  was  to  the  effect  that  lie  did 
not  know.  "  To  whom  do  you  pay  your  taxes  ?"  "  To  the 
Government."  "  Which  Government ;  the  English  Govern- 
ment or  the  Bhawulpore  Government?"  His  answer  was  that 
he  did  not  care  so  long  as  he  had  to  pay  them  to  somebody, 
and  that  he  certainly  did  not  know. 

Little  as  our  Bhawulpore  friend  knew  or  cared  about  the 
color  of  his  rulers,  he»  was  nevertheless,  according  to  our  Indian 
Government  theories,  ono  of  the  people  who  ought  to  be  most 
anxious  for  the  advent  of  English  rule.  Such  has  been  the 
insecurity  of  life  in  Bhawulpore  that  of  the  six  last  viziers 
five  have  been  murdered  by  order  of  the  khan,  the  last  of  all 
having  been  strangled  in  18G2  ;  and  no  native  State  has  been 
more  notorious  than  Bhawulpore  for  the  extravagance  and 
gross  licentiousness  of  the  reigning  princes.  The  rulers  of 
Bhawulpore,  although  nominally  controlled  by  us,  have  hither 
to  been  absolute  despots,  and  have  frequently  put  to  death 
their  subjects  out  of  mere  whimsy.  For  years  the  country 
has  been  torn  by  ceaseless  revolutions,  to  the  ruin  of  the 
traders  and  the  demoralization  of  the  people ;  the  taxes  have 
been  excessive,  peculation  universal,  and  the  army  has  lived 
at  free  quarters.  The  khans  were  for  many  years  in  such 
dread  of  attempts  upon  their  lives  that  every  dish  for  their 
table  was  tasted  by  the  cooks  ;  the  army  was  mutinous,  all 
appointments  bought  and  sold,  and  the  khans  being  Moham- 
medans, no  one  need  pay  a  debt  to  a  Hindoo. 

Bhawulpore  is  no  exceptional  case ;  everywhere  we  hear 
of  similar  deeds  being  comrabn  in  native  States.  One  of  the 
native  rulers  lately  shot  a  man  for  killing  a  tiger  that  the  rajah 
had  wounded ;  another  flogged  a  subject  for  defending  his 
wife ;  abduction,  adultery,  and  sale  of  wives  are  common 
among  them.  Land  is  seized  from  its  holders  without  com- 
pensation being  so  much  as  offered  to  them ;  extortion,  tor- 
ture, and  denial  of  justice  are  common,  open  venality  prevails 
in  all  ranks,  and  no  native  will  take  tho  pledged  word  of  his 
king,  while  the  revenues,  largely  made  up  of  forced  loans,  are 
wasted  on  all  that  is  most  vile. 


Native  States.  487 

In  a  vast  number  of  cases  the  reigning  families  have  de- 
generated to  such  an  extent  that  the  sceptre  has  come  into 
the  hands  of  some  mere  driveller,  whom,  for  the  senselessness 
of  his  rule,  it  has  at  last  been  necessary  to  depose.  Those 
who  have  made  idiocy  their  study  know  that  in  the  majority 
of  cases  the  infirmity  is  the  last  stage  of  the  declension  of  a 
race  worn  out  by  hereditary  perpetuation  of  luxury,  vice,  or 
disease  the  effect  of  vice.  Every  ruling  family  in  the  East, 
save  such  as  slave  marriages  have  re-invigorated,  is  one  of 
these  run-down  and  exhausted  breeds.  Not  only  unbounded 
tyranny  and  extortion,  but  incredible  venality  and  corruption, 
prevail  in  the  greater  number  of  native  States.  The  Rajah 
of  Travancore,  as  it  is  said,  lately  requiring  some  small  bunga- 
low to  be  added  to  a  palace,  a  builder  contracted  to  build  it 
for  10,000  rs.  After  a  time,  he  came  to  apply  to  be  let  off, 
and  on  the  rajah  asking  him  the  reason,  he  said, "  Your  high- 
ness, of  the  10,000  rs.,  your  prime  minister  will  get  5000  rs., 
his  secretary  1000  rs.,  the  baboos  in  his  office  another  2000  rs., 
the  ladies  of  the  zenana  1000  rs.,  and  the  commander  of  your 
forces  500  rs. ;  now  the  bungalow  itself  will  cost  500  rs.,  so 
where  am  I  to  make  my  profit  ?"  Corruption,  however,  per- 
vades in  India  all  native  institutions ;  it  is  not  enough  to  show 
that  native  States  are  subject  to  it  unless  we  can  prove  that 
it  is  worse  there  than  in  our  own  dominions. 

The  question  whether  British  or  native  rule  be  the  least 
distasteful  to  the  people  of  India  is  one  upon  which  it  is  not 
easy  to  decide.  It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  our  Government 
should  be  popular  with  the  Rajpoot  chiefs  or  with  the  great 
nobles  of  Oude,  but  it  may  fairly  be  contended  that  the  mass 
of  the  people  live  in  more  comfort,  and,  in  spite  of  the  Orissa 
case,  are  less  likely  to  starve,  in  English  than  in  native  terri- 
tory. No  nation  has  at  any  time  ever  governed  an  alien  em- 
pire more  wisely  or  justly  than  we  the  Punjaub.  The  men 
who  cry  out  against  our  rule  are  the  nobles  and  the  schemers, 
who,  under  it,  are  left  without  a  hope.  Our  levelling  rule 
does  not  even,  like  other  democracies,  raise  up  a  military  chief- 
tainship. Our  native  officers  of  the  highest  rank  are  paid  and 
treated  much  as  are  European  sergeants,  though  in  native 
States  they  would  of  course  be  generals  and  princes. 

Want  of  promotion  for  sepoys  and  educated  native  civilians, 


488  Greater  Britain. 

and  the  degrading  treatment  of  the  high-caste  people  hy  the 
English,  were  causes,  among  others,  of  the  mutiny.  The  treat- 
ment of  the  natives  can  not  easily  be  reformed  ;  if  we  punish 
or  discourage  such  behavior  in  our  officers,  we  can  not  easily 
reach  the  European  planters  and  the  railway  officials,  while 
punishment  itself  would  only  make  men  treat  the  natives  with 
violence  instead  of  mere  disdain  when  out  of  sight  of  their 
superiors.  There  is,  however,  reason  to  believe  that  in  many 
districts  the  people  are  not  only  well  off  under  our  Govern- 
ment, but  that  they  know  it.  During  the  native  rule  in  Oude 
the  population  was  diminished  by  a  continual  outpour  of  fu- 
gitives. The  British  district  of  Mirzapore  Chowhare,  on  the 
Oude  frontiers,  had  a  rural  population  of  over  1000  to  each 
square  mile — a  density  entirely  owing  to  the  emigration  of 
the  natives  from  their  villages  in  Oude.  Again,  British  Bur- 
mah  is  draining  of  her  people  Upper  Burmah,  which  remains 
under  the  old  rulers  ;  and  throughout  India  the  eye  can  distin- 
guish British  territories  from  the  native  States  by  the  look  of 
ju'osperity  which  is  borne  by  all  our  villages. 

The  native  merchants  and  towns-folk  generally  are  our 
friends.  It  is  unfortunately  the  fact,  however,  that  the  cnlti- 
vators  of  the  soil,  who  form  three-fourths  of  the  population 
of  India,  believe  themselves  worse  off  under  us  than  in  the 
native  States.  They  say  that  they  care  not  who  rules  so  long 
as  their  holdings  are  secured  to  them  at  a  fixed  rent,  whereas 
under  our  system  the  zemindars  pay  us  a  fixed  rent,  but  in 
many  districts  exact  what  they  please  from  the  competing 
peasants — a  practice  which,  under  the  native  system,  was  pre- 
vented by  custom.  In  all  our  future  land  settlements  it  is  to 
be  hoped  that  the  agreement  will  be  made,  not  with  middle- 
men, but  directly  with  the  people. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  lay  down  certain  rules  for  our  future 
behavior  toward  the  native  States.  We  already  exercise  over 
the  whole  of  them  a  control  sufficient  to  secure  ourselves 
against  attack  in  time  of  peace,  but  not  sufficient  to  relieve  us 
from  all  fear  of  hostile  action  in  time  of  internal  revolt  or  ex- 
ternal war.  It  might  be  well  that  we  should  issue  a  procla- 
mation declaring  that,  for  the  future,  Ave  should  invariably 
recognize  the  practice  of  adoption  of  children  by  the  native 
rulers,  as  Ave  have  done  in  the  case  of  the  Mysore  succession  ; 


Native  States.  489 

but  that,  on  the  other  hand,  we  should  require  the  gradual 
disbandment  of  all  troops  not  needed  for  the  preservation  of 
internal  peace.  We  might  well  commence  our  action  in  this 
matter  by  calling  upon  the  native  rulers  to  bind  themselves 
by  treaty  no  longer  to  keep  on  foot  artillery.  In  the  event  of 
an  invasion  of  Hindostan  a  large  portion  of  our  European 
force  would  be  needed  to  overawe  the  native  princes,  and 
prevent  their  marching  upon  our  rear.  It  is  impossible  to  be- 
lieve that  the  native  States  would  ever  be  of  assistance  to  us 
except  in  cases  where  Ave  could  do  without  their  help.  Dur- 
ing the  mutiny  the  Nepaulese  delayed  their  promised  march 
to  join  us  until  they  were  certain  that  we  should  beat  the 
mutineers,  and  this  although  the  Nepaulese  are  among  our 
surest  friends.  After  the  mutiny  it  came  to  light  that  Luck- 
now  and  Delhi — then  native  capitals — had  been  centres  of 
intrigue,  although  Ave  had  "  Residents  "  at  each,  and  it  is  prob- 
able that  Hyderabad  and  Cashmere  city  are  little  less  danger- 
ous to  us  noAV  than  Avas  Delhi  in  1 85  7. 

There  is  one  native  State,  that  of  Cashmere  and  Jummoo, 
which  stands  upon  a  very  different  footing  to  the  rest.  Cre- 
ated by  us  as  late  as  1846 — Avhen  Ave  sold  this  best  of  all  the 
provinces  conquered  by  as  from  the  Maharajahs  of  Lahore  to 
a  Sikh  traitor,  Gholab  Singh,  an  ex-farmer  of  taxes,  for  three- 
quarters  of  a  million  sterling,  Avhich  he  embezzled  from  the 
treasury  of  Lahore — the  State  of  Cashmere  has  been  steadily 
misgoverned  for  twenty  years.  Although  our  tributary,  the 
Maharajah  of  Cashmere  forbids  English  travellers  to  enter  his 
dominions  Avithout  leave  (which  is  granted  only  to  a  fixed 
number  of  persons  CATery  year),  to  employ  more  than  a  stated 
number  of  servants,  to  travel  except  by  certain  passes  for  fear 
of  their  meeting  his  Avivcs,  to  buy  provisions  except  of  certain 
persons,  or  to  remain  in  the  country  after  the  1st  November 
under  any  circumstances  Avhatever.  lie  imprisons  all  natiA*e 
Christians,  prohibits  the  exportation  of  grain  Avhenever  there 
is  a  scarcity  in  our  territory,  and  takes  every  opportunity  that 
falls  in  his  Avay  of  insulting  our  GoArernment  and  its  officials. 
Our  Central  Asian  trade  has  been  all  but  entirely  destroyed 
by  the  duties  levied  by  his  officers,  and  Russia  is  the  Mahara- 
jah's chosen  friend.  The  unhappy  people  of  the  Cashmere 
ValleA*,  sold  by  us  Avithout  their  consent  or  knoAvledge,  to  a 

X  2 


490  Greater  Britain. 

family  which  lias  never  ceased  to  oppress  them,  petition  us 
continually  for  relief,  and,  by  flocking  into  our  Punjaub  terri- 
tory, give  practical  testimony  to  the  wrongs  they  suffer. 

In  this  case  of  Cashmere  there  is  ample  ground  for  imme- 
diate repurchase  or  annexation,  if  annexation  it  can  be  called 
to  remove  or  buy  out  a  feudatory  family  which  was  unjustly 
raised  to  power  by  us  twenty-two  years  ago,  and  which  has 
broken  every  article  of  the  agreement  under  which  it  was 
placed  upon  the  tributary  throne.  The  only  reason  which  has 
ever  been  shown  against  the  resumption  by  us  of  the  govern- 
ment of  the  Cashmere  Valley  is  the  strange  argument  that,  by 
placing  it  in  the  hands  of  a  feudatory,  we  save  the  expense 
of  defending  the  frontier  against  the  dangerous  hill-tribes ; 
although  the  revenues  of  the  province,  even  were  taxation 
much  reduced,  Avould  amply  suffice  to  meet  the  cost  of  con- 
tinual war,  and  although  our  experience  in  Central  India  has 
shown  that  many  hill-tribes  which  will  not  submit  to  Hindoo 
rajahs  become  peaceable  at  once  upon  our  annexation  of  their 
country.  Were  Cashmere  independent  and  in  the  hands  of 
its  old  rulers,  there  would  be  ample  ground  for  its  annexation 
in  the  prohibition  of  trade,  the  hinderance  to  the  civilization 
of  Central  Asia,  the  gross  oppression  of  the  people,  the  exist- 
ence of  slavery,  and  the  imprisonment  of  Christians  ;  as  it  is, 
the  non-annexation  of  the  country  almost  amounts  to  a  crime 
against  mankind. 

Although  the  necessity  of  consolidation  of  our  empire  and 
the  progressive  character  of  our  rule  are  reasons  for  annexing 
the  whole  of  the  native  States,  there  are  other  and  stronger 
arguments  in  favor  of  leaving  them  as  they  are;  our  policy 
toward  the  Nizam  must  be  regulated  by  the  consideration 
that  he  is  now  the  head  of  the  Moslem  power  in  India,  and 
that  his  influence  over  the  Indian  Mohammedans  may  be  made 
useful  to  us  in  our  dealings  with  that  dangerous  portion  of 
our  people.  Our  military  arrangements  with  the  Nizam  are, 
moreover,  on  the  best  of  footings.  Scindia  is  our  friend,  and 
no' bad  ruler,  but  some  interference  may  be  needed  with  the 
Guicodar  of  Baroda  and  with  Holkar.  Our  policy  toward 
Mysore  is  now  declared,  and  consists  in  the  respecting  the  na- 
tive rule  if  the  young  prince  proves  himself  capable  of  good 
government,  and  we  might  impose  similar  conditions  upon 


Native  States.  491 

the  remaining  princes,  and  also  suppress  forced  labor  in  their 
States  as  we  have  all  but  suppressed  suttee. 

In  dealing  with  the  native  princes  it  is  advisable  that  we 
should  remember  that  we  are  no  interlopers  of  to-day  coming 
in  to  disturb  families  that  have  been  for  ages  the  rulers  of  the 
land.  Many  of  the  greatest  of  the  native  families  were  set  up 
by  ourselves;  and  of  the  remainder  few,  if  any,  have  been  in 
possession  of  their  countries  so  long  as  have  the  English  of 
Madras  or  Bombay. 

The  Guicodars  of  Baroda  and  the  family  of  Holkar  are  de- 
scended from  cowherds,  and  that  of  Scindia  from  a  peasant, 
and  none  of  them  date  back  much  more  than  a  hundred  years. 
The  family  of  the  Nabobs  of  Arcot,  founded  by  an  adven- 
turer, is  not  more  ancient,  neither  is  that  of  Nizam :  the  great 
Ilyder  Ali  was  the  son  of  a  police  constable,  and  was  unable 
to  read  or  write.  While  we  should  suspiciously  adhere  to 
the  ti-eaties  that  Ave  have  made,  we  are  bound,  in  the  interests 
of  humanity,  to  intervene  in  all  cases  where  it  is  certain  that 
the  mass  of  the  people  would  prefer  our  rule,  and  where  they 
are  suffering  under  slavery  or  gross  oppression. 

Holka  has  permitted  us  to  make  a  railway  across  his  terri- 
tory, but  he  levies  such  enormous  duties  upon  goods  in  transit 
as  to  cramp  the  development  of  trade  in  a  considerable  por- 
tion of  our  dominions.  Now  the  fact  that  a  happy  combina- 
tion of  circumstances  enabled  the  cowherd,  his  ancestor,  to 
seize  upon  a  certain  piece  of  territory  a  hundred  years  ago 
can  have  given  his  descendants  no  prescriptive  right  to  im- 
pede the  civilization  of  India ;  all  that  we  must  aim  at  is  to 
so  improve  our  governmental  system  as  to  make  the  natives 
themselves  see  that  our  rule  means  the  moral  advancement  of 
their  country. 

The  best  argument  that  can  be  made  use  of  against  our 
rule  is  that  its  strength  and  minuteness  enfeeble  the  native 
character.  When  we  annex  a  State  we  put  an  end  to  promo- 
tion alike  in  war  and  learning  ;  and  under  our  rule,  unless,  it 
change  its  character,  enlightenment  must  decline  in  India, 
however  much  material  prosperity  may  increase. 

Under  our  present  system  of  exclusion  of  natives  from  the 
Indian  Civil  Service,  the  more  boys  we  educate  the  more 
vicious   and   discontented  men  Ave   have   beneath  our   rule. 


4:92  Greater  Britain. 

Were  we  to  throw  it  open  to  them,  xinder  a  plan  of  compe- 
tition which  "would  admit  to  the  service  even  a  small  number 
of  natives,  we  should  at  least  obtain  a  valuable  body  of  friends 
in  those  admitted,  and  should  make  the  excluded  feel  that 
their  exclusion  Avas  in  some  measure  their  own  fault.  As  it 
is,  we  not  only  exclude  natives  from  our  own  service,  but  even 
to  some  extent  from  that  of  the  native  States,  whose  levies 
are  often  drilled  by  English  officers.  The  Guicodar  of  Baro- 
da's  service  is  popular  with  Englishmen,  as  it  has  become  a 
custom  that  when  he  has  a  review  he  presents  each  of  his  of- 
ficers with  a  year's  full  pay. 

Our  plan  of  shutting  out  the  natives  from  all  share  in  the 
Government  not  only  makes  our  rule  unpopular,  but  gives  rise 
to  the  strongest  of  all  the  arguments  in  favor  of  the  retention 
of  the  existing  native  States,  which  is,  that  they  offer  a  career 
to  shrewd  and  learned  natives,  who  otherwise  would  spend 
their  leisure  in  devising  plots  against  us.  One  of  the  ablest 
men  in  India,  Madhava  Rao,  now  premier  of  Travancore,  was 
born  in  our  territory,  and  was  senior  scholar  of  his  year  in  the 
Madras  College.  That  such  men  as  Madhava  Rao  and  Salar 
Jung  should  be  incapable  of  finding  suitable  employment  in 
our  service  is  one  of  the  standing  reproaches  of  our  rule. 

Could  Ave  but  throw  open  our  services  to  the  natives,  our 
Government  might,  with  advantage  to  civilization,  be  extend- 
ed over  the  whole  of  the  natiA'e  States  ;  for  Avhether  avc  are 
ever  to  leaA'o  India  or  whether  Ave  are  to  remain  there  till  the 
end  of  time,  there  can  be  no  doubt  but  that  the  course  best 
adapted  to  raise  the  moral  condition  of  the  natiAres  is  to  mould 
Hindostan  into  a  homogeneous  empire  sufficiently  strong  to 
stand  by  itself  against  all  attacks  from  Avithout,  and  internally 
governed  by  natiA'es,  under  a  gradually  Aveakened  control  from 
at  home.  If,  after  careful  trial,  Ave  find  that  we  can  not  edu- 
cate the  people  to  become  active  supporters  of  our  poAver, 
then  it  will  be  time  to  make  use  of  the  native  princes  and 
grandees,  but  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  people,  as  they  become 
well  taught,  will  also  become  the  main-stay  of  our  democratic 
rule. 

The  present  attitude  of  the  mass  of  the  people  is  one  of  in- 
difference and  neutrality,  which  in  itself  lends  a  kind  of  pas- 
sive strength  to  our  rule.     During  the  mutiny  of  185  V  the  pep- 


Scinde.  493 

pie  neither  aided  nor  opposed  us ;  and  even  had  the  whole  of 
the  land-owners  been  against  us,  as  were  those  of  Oude,  it  is 
doubtful  -whether  they  could  have  raised  their  villagers  and 
peasants.  Were  our  policemen  relatively  equal  to  their  offi- 
cers and  to  the  magistrates,  we  should  never  hear  of  native 
disaffection ;  but  we  can  not  count  upon  the  attachment  of  the 
people  so  long  as  it  is  possible  for  our  constables  to  procure 
confessions  by  the  bribery  of  villagers  or  the  application  of 
pots  full  of  wasps  to  their  stomachs. 

In  the  matter  of  the  annexation  of  those  native  States 
which  still  cumber  the  earth  we  are  not  altogether  free  agents. 
We  swallow  up  States  like  Bhawulpore  just  as  Russia  con- 
sumes Bokhara.  Everywhere  indeed  in  Asia  strong  countries 
must  inevitably  swallow  up  their  weaker  neighbors.  Failure 
of  heirs,  broken  treaties,  irregular  frontiers — all  these  arc  rea- 
sons or  assumed  reasons  for  advance ;  but  the  end  is  certain, 
and  is  exemplified  in  the  march  of  England  from  Calcutta  to 
Peshawar,  and  of  Russia  from  the  Aral  to  Turkestan.  Our 
experience  in  the  case  of  the  Punjaub  shows  that  even  honest 
discouragement  of  farther  advances  on  the  part  of  the  rulers 
of  the  stronger  power  will  not  always  suffice  to  prevent  an- 
nexation. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

SCINDE. 

Near  Mithun  Kote  we  steamed  suddenly  into  the  main 
stream  of  the  Indus,  the  bed  of  which  is  here  a  mile  and  a 
quarter  wide.  Although  the  river  at  the  time  of  my  visit  was 
rising  fast,  it  was  far  from  being  at  its  greatest  height.  In 
January  it  brings  down  but  forty  thousand  cubic  feet  of  water 
every  second,  but  in  August  it  pours  down  four  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand.  The  river-bed  is  rarely  covered  with  running 
water,  but  the  stream  cuts  a  channel  for  itself  upon  one  shore, 
and  flows  in  a  current  of  eight  or  nine  miles  an  hour,  while 
the  remainder  of  the  bed  is  filled  with  half-liquid  sand. 

The  navigation  of  the  Indus  is  monotonous  enough.  Were 
it  not  for  the  climate,  the  view  would  resemble  that  on  the 
Maas,  near  Rotterdam,  though  with  alligators  lining  the  banks 
instead  of  logs  from  the  Upper  Meuse ;  but  climate  affects 


494  Greater  Britain. 

color,  and  every  country  has  tints  of  its  own.  California  is 
golden,  New  Zealand  a  black-green,  Australia  yellow,  the  In- 
dus Valley  is  of  a  blazing  red.  Although  every  evening  the 
Beloochee  Mountains  came  in  sight  as  the  sun  sank  down  be- 
hiud  them,  and  revealed  their  shapes  in  shadow,  all  through 
the  day  the  landscape  was  one  of  endless  flats.  The  river  is  a 
dirty  flood,  now  swift,  now  sluggish,  running  through  a  coun- 
try in  which  sand  deserts  alternate  only  with  fields  of  stone. 
Villages  upon  the  banks  there  are  none,  and  from  town  tj 
town  is  a  day's  journey  at  the  least.  The  only  life  in  the 
View  is  given  by  an  occasional  sail  of  gigantic  size  and  curious 
shape,  belonging  to  some  native  craft  or  other  on  her  voyage 
from  the  Punjaub  to  Kurrachee.  On  our  journey  down  the 
Indus  we  passed  hundreds  of  ships,  but  met  not  one.  They 
are  built  of  timber,  which  is  plentiful  in  the  Himalayas,  upon 
the  head-waters  of  the  river,  and  carry  down  to  the  sea  the 
produce  of  the  Punjaub.  The  stream  is  so  strong  that  the 
ships  are  broken  up  in  Scinde,  and  the  crews  walk  back  1000 
miles  along  the  bank.  In  building  his  ships  upon  the  Ilydas- 
pes,  and  sailing  them  down  the  Indus  to  its  mouth,  Alexander 
did  but  follow  the  custom  of  the  country.  The  natives,  how- 
ever, break  up  their  ships  at  Kotree,  whereas  the  Macedonian 
intrusted  his  to  Nearchus  for  the  voyage  to  the  Gulf  of  Persia 
•and  a  survey  of  the  coast. 

Geographically,  the  Indus  Valley  is  but  a  portion  of  the 
Great  Sahara.  Those  who  know  the  desert  well  say  that 
from  Cape  Blanco  to  Khartoom,  from  Khartoom  to  Muscat, 
from  Muscat  to  Moultan,  the  desert  is  but  one ;  the  same  in 
the  absence  of  life,  the  same  in  such  life  as  it  does  possess. 
The  Valley  of  the  Nile  is  but  an  oasis,  the  Gulfs  of  Persia 
and  of  Aden  are  but  trifling  breaks  in  its  vast  width.  Rain- 
less, swept  by  dry,  hot  winds  laden  with  prickly  sand,  trav- 
ersed everywhere  by  low  ranges  of  red  and  sun-burnt  rocks, 
strewn  with  jagged  stones,  and  dotted  here  and  there  with  a 
patch  of  dates  gathered  about  some  ancient  well,  such  is  the 
Sahara  for  a  length  of  near  six  thousand  miles.  On  the  Indus 
banks  the  sand  is  as  salt  as  it  is  at  Suez,  and  there  are  as  many 
petrified  trees  between  Sukkur  and  Kurrachee  as  there  are  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Cairo. 

Our  days  on  board  were  all  passed  upon  one  plan.     Each 


Scinde.  495 

morning  we  rose  at  dawn,  which  came  about  half-past  four, 
and,  watching  the  starting  of  the  ship  from  the  bank  where 
she  had  been  moored  all  night,  we  got  a  cool  walk  in  our 
sleeping-clothes  before  we  bathed  and  dressed.  The  heat 
then  suffocated  us  quietly  till  four,  when  we  would  re-assert 
the  majesty  of  man  by  bathing,  and  attempting  to  walk  or 
talk  till  dinner,  which  was  at  five.  At  dark  we  anchored,  and 
after  watching  the  water-turtles  at  their  play,  or  hunting  for 
the  monstrous  water-lizards  known  as  "gos»"  —  apparently 
the  ichneumons,  called  in  Egypt  "  gots  " — or  sometimes  fish- 
ing for  great  mud-fish  with  wide  mouths  and  powerful  teeth, 
we  would  resume  our  sleeping  clothes  (in  which,  but  for  the 
dignity  of  the  Briton  in  the  eyes  of  the  native  crew,  we  should 
have  dined  and  spent  the  day).  At  half-past  seven  or  eight 
we  lay  down  on  deck,  and  forgot  our  sorrows  in  sleep,  or  en- 
gaged in  a  frantic  struggle  with  the  cockroaches.  In  the  lat- 
ter conflict  we — in  our  dreams  at  least — were  not  victorious, 
and  once  in  an  awful  trance  I  believed  myself  carried  off  by 
one  leg  in  the  jaws  of  a  gigantic  cockroach,  and  pushed  with 
his  feelers  down  into  this  horrid  hole. 

Each  hour  passed  on  the  Indus  differs  from  the  others  only 
in  the  greater  or  less  portion  of  it  which  is  devoted  to  getting 
off  the  sand-banks.  After  steaming  gallantly  down  a  narrow 
but  deep  and  swift  piece  of  the  river  we  would  come  to  a 
spot  at  which  the  flood  would  lose  itself  in  crossing  its  bed 
from  one  bank  to  the  other.  Backing  the  engines,  but  being 
whirled  along  close  to  the  steep  bank  by  the  remaining  poi-- 
tion  of  the  current,  we  soon  felt  a  shock,  the  recoil  from 
which  upset  us,  chairs  and  all,  it  being  noticeable  that  Ave  al- 
ways fell  up  stream,  and  not  with  our  heads  in  the  direction 
in  which  the  ship  was  going.  As  soon  as  we  were  fairly  stuck 
the  captain  flew  at  the  pilot,  and  kicked  him  round  the  deck 
— a  process  always  borne  with  fortitude,  although  the  pilot 
was  changed  every  day.  The  only  pilot  never  kicked  was 
one  who  came  on  board  near  Bhawulpore,  and  who  carried  a 
jewelled  tulwar,  or  Afghan  scimiter,  but  even  he  was  threat- 
ened. The  kicking  over,  an  entry  of  the  time  of  grounding 
was  made  by  the  captain  in  the  pilot's  book,  and  the  mate 
was  ordered  out  in  a  boat  to  sound,  while  the  native  soldiers 
on  board  the  flats  we  were  towing   began  quietly  to  cook 


496  Greater  Britain. 

their  dinner.  The  mate  having  found  a  sort  of  channel, 
though  sometimes  it  had  a  ridge  across  it  over  which  the 
steamer  could  not  pass  without  touching,  he  returned  for  a 
kedge,  which  he  fixed  in  the  sand,  and  we  were  soon  warped 
up  to  it  by  the  use  of  the  capstan,  the  native  crew  singing 
merrily  the  while.  Every  now  and  then,  however,  we  would 
take  the  ground  in  the  centre  of  the  ship,  and  with  deep  water 
all  round,  and  then,  instead  of  getting  off,  we  for  hours  to- 
gether only  pivoted  round  and  round.  One  of  the  Indus 
boats,  with  a  line  regiment  on  board,  was  once  aground  for 
a  month  near  Mithun  Kote,  to  the  entire  destruction  of  all  the 
wild  boars  in  the  neighborhood. 

The  kicking  of  the  unfortunate  pilots  was  not  a  pleasant 
sight,  but  there  were  sometimes  comic  incidents  attached  to 
our  periodic  groundings.  Once  I  noticed  that  the  five  men 
who  were  constantly  sounding  with  colored  poles  in  different 
parts  of  the  ship  and  flats  had  got  into  a  monotonous  chorus 
of  "  panche — 6  pot "  ("  five  feet ") — we  drawing  only  three, 
so  that  we  went  ahead  confidently  at  full  speed,  when  sudden- 
ly we  ran  aground  with  a  violent  shock.  On  the  re-sounding 
of  our  course  by  the  boat's  crew  we  found  that  our  pole-men 
must  for  some  time  past  have  been  guessing  the  soundings  to 
save  the  trouble  of  looking.  These  fellows  richly  deserved  a 
kicking,  but  the  pilots  are  innocent  of  any  fault  but  inability 
to  keep  pace  with  the  rapid  changes  of  the  river-course. 

Another  curious  scene  took  place  one  day  when  Ave  were 
steaming  down  a  reach  in  which  the  river  made  many  sudden 
twists  and  turns.  We  had  on  board  a  merchant  from  the 
Persian  Gulf,  a  devout  Mohammedan.  In  the  afternoon  he 
carried  his  praying-carpet  on  to  the  bridge  between  the  pad- 
dle-boxes, and  there,  turning  to  the  west,  commenced  to  pray. 
The  sun  was  on  his  left,  but  almost  facing  him  ;  in  an  instant 
round  whirled  the  ship,  making  her  course  between  two  sand- 
bars, and  Mecca  and  the  sun  into  the  bargain  were  right 
behind  our  worshiper.  This  was  too  much  even  for  his  devo- 
tion, so,  glancing  at  the  new  course,  he  turned  his  carpet,  and, 
looking  in  a  fresh  direction,  recommenced  his  prayers.  After 
a  minute  or  two  back  went  the  ship,  and  Ave  began  again  to 
steer  a  southerly  course.  All  this  time  the  Persian  kept  his 
look  of  complete  abstraction,  and  remained  unshaken  through 


Scinde.  497 

all  his  difficulties.  This  seriousness  in  face  of  events  which 
would  force  into  shouts  of  Laughter  any  European  congrega- 
tion is  a  characteristic  of  a  native.  It  is  strange  that  English- 
men are  nowhere  so  easily  provoked  to  loud  laughter  as  in  a 
church  or  college  chapel,  natives  at  no  time  so  insusceptible 
of  ridicule  as  when  engaged  upon  the  services  of  their  re- 
ligions. 

The  shallowness  of  the  Indus,  its  impracticability  for  steam- 
ships during  some  months  of  the  year,  and  the  many  windings 
of  the  stream — all  these  things  make  it  improbable  that  the 
river  will  ever  bo  largely  available  for  purposes  of  trade ;  at 
the  same  time  the  Indus  Valley  must  necessarily  be  the  line 
taken  by  the  commerce  of  the  Punjaub,  and  eventually  by  that 
of  some  portions  of  Central  Asia,  and  even  of  Southern  China. 
Whether  Kurrachee  becomes  our  great  Indian  port,  or  whether 
our  railway  be  made  through  Beloochistan,  a  safe  and  speedy 
road  up  the  Indus  Valley  for  troops  and  trade  is  needed. 

If  we  take  into  consideration  the  size  of  India,  the  amount 
of  its  revenues,  and  the  length  of  time  during  which  we  have 
occupied  that  portion  of  its  extent  which  we  at  present  hold, 
it  is  impossible  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that  not  even  in  Aus- 
tralia have  railways  been  more  completely  neglected  than  they 
have  been  in  India.  We  have  opened  but  4000  miles,  or  one 
mile  for  every  45,000  people.  Nothing  has  been  touched  as 
yet  but  the  Grand  Trunk  and  great  military  and  postal  routes, 
and  even  these  are  little  more  than  half  completed.  Even  the 
Bombay  and  Calcutta  mail  line  and  the  Calcutta  and  Lahore 
lines  are  hardly  finished ;  the  Peshawur  line*  and  the  Indus 
road  not  yet  begun.  While  at  home  people  believe  that  the 
Euphrates  Valley  Railway  is  under  consideration,  they  will 
find,  if  they  come  out  to  India,  that  to  reach  Peshawur,  in  34° 
N.  latitude,  they  must  go  to  Bombay,  in  18°,  if  not  to  Galle,  in 
6°.  Even  if  they  reach  Kurrachee,  they  will  find  it  a  month's 
journey  to  Peshawur.  While  we  are  trying  to  tempt  the 
wool  and  shawls  of  Central  Asia  down  to  Umritsur  and  La- 
hore, the  goods  with  which  we  would  buy  these  things  are 
sent  round  by  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and  Calcutta, 

It  is  true  that  the  Indus  line  will  be  no  easy  one  to  make. 
To  bridge  the  river  at  Mithun  Kote  or  even  at  Kotree  would 
be  difficult  enough  ;  and  were  it  to  be  bridged  at  Sukkur,  where 


498  Greater  Britain. 

there  is  rock,  and  a  narrow  pass  upon  the  river,  the  line  from 
Sukkur  to  Kurrachee  would  be  exposed  to  depredation  from 
the  frontier  tribes.  The  difficulties  are  great,  but  the  need 
is  greater,  and  the  argument  of  the  heavy  cost  of  river-side 
railroads  should  not  weigh  with  us  in  the  case  of  lines  required 
for  the  safety  of  the  country.  The  Lahore  and  Peshawar,  the 
Kotree  and  Moult  an,  the  Kotree  and  Baroda,  and  the  Baroda 
and  Delhi  lines,  instead  of  being  set  one  against  the  other  for 
comparison,  should  be  simultaneously  completed  as  necessary 
for  the  defense  of  the  empire,  and  as  forming  the  trunk-lines 
for  innumerable  branches  into  the  cotton  and  wheat-growing 
districts. 

One  of  the  branches  of  the  Indus  line  will  have  to  be  con- 
structed from  the  Bholan  Pass  to  Sukkur,  where  we  lay  some 
days  embarking  cotton.  Sukkur  lies  on  the  Beloochistan 
side  ;  Roree  fort — known  as  the  "  Key  of  Scinde,"  the  seizure 
of  which  by  us  provoked  the  great  war  with  the  Ameers — on 
an  island  in  mid-stream ;  and  Bukkur  city  on  the  eastern  or 
left  bank  ;  and  the  river,  here  narrowed  to  a  width  of  a  quar- 
ter of  a  mile,  runs  with  the  violence  of  a  mountain  torrent. 

Sukkur  is  one  of  the  most  ancient  of  Indian  cities,  and  was 
mentioned  as  time-worn  by  the  Greek  geographers,  while  tra- 
dition, says  that  its  antiquities  attracted  Alexander ;  but  towns 
grow  old  with  great  rapidity  in  India,  and,  once  ancient  in 
their  look,  never  to  the  eye  become  in  the  slightest  degree 
older. 

In  Sukkur  I  first  saw  the  Scindee  cap,  which  may  be  de- 
scribed as  a  tall  hat  with  the  brim  atop,  but  the  Scindees  were 
not  the  only  strangely-dressed  traders  in  Sukkur  and  Roree : 
there  were  high-capped  Persians,  and  lean  Afghans,  with  long 
gaunt  faces  and  high  cheek-bones,  and  furred  merchants  from 
Central  Asia.  It  is  even  said  that  goods  find  their  way  over- 
land from  China  to  Sukkur,  through  Eastern  Persia  and  Be- 
loochistan, the  traders  preferring  to  come  round  four  thousand 
miles  than  to  cross  the  main  chain  of  the  Himalayas  or  pass 
through  the  country  of  the  Afghans. 

In  ancient  times  there  was  considerable  intercourse  between 
China  and  Hindostan ;  at  the  end  of  the  seventh  centuiy,  in- 
deed, the  Chinese  invaded  India  through  Nepaid,  and  captured 
five  hundred  cities.     It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  next  few  years 


Scinde.  499 

may  see  a  railway  built  from  Rangoon  to  Southern  China,  and 
from  Calcutta  to  the  Yang-tse-Kiang,  a  river  upon  which  there 
are  ample  stores  of  coal,  which  would  supply  the  manufactur- 
ing wants  of  India. 

After  viewing  from  a  lofty  tower  the  flat  country  in  the 
direction  of  Shikapore,  we  spent  one  of  our  Sukkur  evenings 
upon  the  Island  of  Roree  watching  the  natives  fishing.  Cast- 
ing themselves  into  the  river  on  the  top  of  skins  full  of  air, 
or  more  commonly  on  great  earthenware  pitchers,  they  floated 
at  a  rapid  pace  down  with  the  whirling  stream,  pushing  be- 
fore them  a  sunken  net  which  they  could  close  and  lift  by  the 
drawing  of  a  string.  About  twice  a  minute  they  would  strike 
a  fish,  and,  lifting  their  head,  would  impale  the  captive  on  a 
stick  slung  behind  their  back,  and  at  once  lower  again  the  net 
in  readiness  for  fur.ther  action. 

Sukkur,  like  seven  other  places  that  I  had  visited  within  a 
year,  has  the  reputation  of  being  the  hottest  city  in  the  world, 
and  the  joke  on  the  boats  of  the  Indus  flotilla  is  that  Moul- 
tan  is  too  hot  to  bear,  and  Sukkur  much  hotter,  but  that  Jaco- 
babad,  on  the  Beloochee  frontier,  near  Sukkur,  is  so  hot  that 
the  people  come  down  thence  to  Sukkur  for  the  hot  season, 
and  find  its  coolness  as  refreshing  as  ordinary  mortals  do  that 
of  Simla.  Hot  as  is  Sukkur,  it  is  fairly  beaten  by  a  spot  at 
the  foot  of  the  Ibex  Hills,  near  Sehwan.  I  was  sleeping  on  the 
bridge  with  an  officer  from  Peshawur  when  the  crew  were 
preparing  to  put  off  from  the  bank  for  the  day's  journey.  We 
were  awakened  by  the  noise ;  but  as  we  sat  up  and  rubbed 
our  eyes,  a  blast  of  hot  wind  came  down  from  the  burnt-up 
hills,  laden  with  fine  sand,  and  of  such  a  character  that  I  got 
a  lantern — for  it  was  not  fully  light — and  made  my  way  to 
the  deck  thermometer.  I  found  it  standing  at  104°,  although 
the  hour  was  4.15  a.m.  At  breakfast-time  it  had  fallen  to  100°, 
from  which  it  slowly  rose,  until  at  1  p.m.  it  registered  116°  in 
the  shade.  The  next  night  it  never  fell  below  100°.  This 
was  the  highest  temperature  I  experienced  in  India  during 
the  hot  weather,  and  it  was,  singularly  enough,  the  same  as 
the  highest  which  I  recorded  in  Australia.  No  part  of  the 
course  of  the  Indus  is  within  the  tropics,  but  it  is  not  in  the 
tropics  that  the  days  are  hottest,  although  the  nights  are 
generally  unbearable  on  sea-level  near  the  equator. 


500  Greater  Britain. 

At  Kootree,  near  Ilydrabad,  the  capital  of  Scindc,  where 
the  tombs  of  the  Ameers  are  imposing  if  far  from  beautiful, 
avc  left  the  Indus  for  the  railway,  and  after  a  night's  journey 
found  ourselves  upon  the  sea-shore  at  Kurrachee. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

OVERLAND     ROUTES. 

Of  all  the  towns  in  India  Kurrachee  is  the  least  Indian. 
With  its  strong  south-westerly  breeze,  its  open  sea  and  danc- 
ing waves,  it  is  to  one  coming  from  the  Indus  Valley  a  pleas- 
ant place  enough  ;  and  the  climate  is  as  good  as  that  of  Alex- 
andria, though  there  is  at  Kurrachee  all  the  dust  of  Cairo. 
For  a  stranger  detained  against  his  will  to  find  Kurrachee 
bearable  there  must  be  something  refreshing  in  its  breezes : 
the  town  stands  on  a  treeless  plain,  and  of  sights  there  are 
none,  unless  it  be  the  sacred  alligators  at  Muggur  Peer,  where 
the  tame  "  man-eaters "  spring  at  a  goat  for  the  visitor's 
amusement  as  freely  as  the  Wolfsbrunnen  trout  jump  at  the 
gudgeon. 

There  is  no  reason  given  why  the  alligators'  pool  should 
be  reputed  holy,  but  in  India  places  easily  acquire  sacred 
fame.  About  Peshawur  there  dwell  many  hill-fanatics,  whose 
sole  religion  appears  to  consist  in  stalking  British  sentries. 
So  many  of  them  have  been  locked  up  in  the  Peshawur  jail 
that  it  has  become  a  holy  place,  and  men  are  said  to  steal  and 
riot  in  the  streets  of  the  bazar  in  order  that  they  may  be  con- 
signed to  this  sacred  temple. 

The  nights  were  noisy  in  Kurrachee,  for  the  great  Mo- 
hammedan feast  of  the  Mohurrum  had  commenced,  and  my 
bungalow  was  close  to  the  lines  of  the  police,  who  are  mostly 
Belooch  Mohammedans.  Every  evening  at  dusk  fires  were 
lighted  in  the  police-lines  and  the  bazar,  and  then  the  tom- 
toming  gradually  increased  from  the  gentle  drone  of  the  day- 
time until  a  perfect  storm  of  "  tom-a-tom,  tomtom,  tom-a-tom, 
tomtom,"  burst  from  all  quarters  of  the  town,  and  continued 
the  whole  night  long,  relieved  only  by  blasts  from  conch-shells 
and  shouts  of  "  Shah  Hassan !  Shah  Hoosein !  "VVah  Allah  ! 
Wan  Allah  !"  as  the  performers  danced  round  the  flames,     t 


502  Greater  Britain. 

heartily  wished  myself  in  the  State  of  Bhawulpore,  where 
there  is  a  license-tax  on  the  beating  of  drums  at  feasts.  The 
first  night  of  the  festival  I  called  up  a  native  servant  who 
"  spoke  English  "  to  make  him  take  me  to  the  fires  and  ex- 
plain the  matter.  His  only  explanation  was  a  continual  rep- 
etition of  "Dat  Mohurrum,  Mohammedan  Christmas  Day." 
When  each  night,  about  dawn,  the  tomtoming  died  away 
once  more,  the  chokedars — or  night  watchmen — woke  up  from 
their  sound  sleep,  and  began  to  shout  "Ha  ha!"  into  every 
room  to  show  that  they  were  awake. 

The  chokedars  are  well-known  characters  in  every  Indian 
station :  always  either  sleepy  and  xiseless,  or  else  in  league 
with  the  thieves,  they  are  nevertheless  a  recognized  class, 
and  are  everywhere  employed.  At  Rawul-pindee  and  Pe- 
shawur  the  chokedars  are  armed  with  guns,  and  it  is  said  that 
a  newly-arrived  English  officer  at  the  former  place  was  lately 
returning  from  a  dinner-party  when  he  was  challenged  by  the 
chokedar  of  the  first  house  he  had  to  pass.  Not  knowing 
what  reply  to  make,  he  took  to  his  heels,  when  the  chokedar 
fired  at  him  as  he  ran.  The  shot  woke  all  the  chokedars  of 
the  parade,  and  the  unfortunate  officer  received  the  fire  of 
every  man  as  he  passed  along  to  his  house  at  the  farther  end 
of  the  lines,  which  he  reached,  however,  in  perfect  safety.  It 
has  been  suggested  that,  for  the  purpose  of  excluding  all  na- 
tives from  the  lines  at  night,  there  should  be  a  shibboleth  or 
standing  parole  of  some  word  which  no  native  can  pronounce. 
The  word  suggested  is  "  Shoeburyness." 

Although  chokedars  were  silent  and  tomtoming  subdued 
during  the  day-time,  there  were  plenty  of  other  sounds.  Liz- 
ards chirped  from  the  walls  of  my  room,  and  sparrows  twit- 
tered from  every  beam  and  rafter  of  the  roof.  When  I  told 
a  Kurracb.ee  friend  that  my  slippers,  my  brushes,  and  sol- 
dier's writing-case  had  all  been  thrown  by  me  on  to  the  chief 
beam  during  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  dislodge  the  enemy, 
he  replied  that  for  his  part  he  paraded  his  drawing-room  ev- 
ery morning  with  a  double-barrelled  gun,  and  frequently  fired 
into  the  rafters,  to  the  horror  of  his  wife. 

In  a  small  lateen-rigged  yacht  lent  us  by  a  fellow-traveller 
from  Moultan  some  of  us  visited  the  works  which  have  long 
been  in  progress  for  the  improvement  of  the  harbor  of  Kur- 


Overland  Eoutes.  503 

raehee,  and  which  form  the  sole  topic  of  conversation  among 
the  residents  in  the  town.  The  works  have  for  object  the  re- 
moval of  the  bar  which  obstructs  the  entrance  to  the  harbor, 
with  a  view  to  permit  the  entry  of  larger  ships  than  can  at 
present  find  an  anchorage  at  Kurrachee. 

The  most  serious  question  under  discussion  is  that  of 
whether  the  bar  is  formed  by  the  Indus  silt  or  merely  by  lo- 
cal causes,  as,  if  the  former  supposition  is  correct,  the  ultimate 
disposition  of  the  ten  thousand  millions  of  cubic  feet  of  mud 
which  the  Indus  annually  brings  down  is  not  likely  to  be  af- 
fected by  such  works  as  those  in  progress  at  Kurrachee. 
When  a  thousand  sealed  bottles  were  lately  thrown  into  the 
Indus  for  it  to  be  seen  whether  they  would  reach  the  bar,  the 
result  of  the  "  great  bottle  trick,"  as  Kurrachee  people  called 
it,  wras  that  only  one  bottle  reached  and  not  one  weathered  a 
point  six  miles  to  the  southward  of  the  harbor.  The  bar  is 
improving  every  year,  and  has  now  some  twenty  feet  of  water, 
so  that  ships  of  1000  tons  can  enter  except  in  the  monsoon, 
and  the  general  belief  of  engineers  is  that  the  completion  of 
the  present  works  will  materially  increase  the  depth  of  wa- 
ter. 

The  question  of  this  bar  is  not  one  of  merely  local  interest : 
a  single  glance  at  the  map  is  sufficient  to  show  the  importance 
of  Kurrachee.  Already  rising  at  an  unprecedented  pace,  hav- 
ing trebled  her  shipping  and  quadrupled  her  trade  in  ten  years, 
she  is  destined  to  make  still  greater  strides  as  soon  as  the  In- 
dus Railway  is  completed;  and  finally — when  the  Persian 
Gulf  route  becomes  a  fact — to  be  the  greatest  of  the  ports  of 
India. 

That  a  railway  must  one  day  be  completed  from  Constan- 
tinople or  from  some  port  on  the  Mediterranean  to  Bnssorah 
on  the  Persian  Gulf  is  a  point  wdnch  scarcely  admits  of  doubt. 
From  Kurrachee  or  Bombay  to  London  by  the  Euphrates 
Valley  and  Constantinople  is  all  but  a  straight  line,  while  from 
Bombay  to  London  by  Aden  and  Alexandria  is  a  wasteful 
curve.  The  so-called  "  Overland  Route  "  is  half  as  long  again 
as  would  be  the  direct  line.  The  Red  Sea  and  Isthmus  route 
has  neither  the  advantage  of  unbroken  sea  nor  of  unbroken  land 
transit;  the  direct  route  with  a  bridge  near  Constantinople 
misrht  be  extended  into  a  land  road  from  India  to  Calais  or 


50-i  Greater  Britain. 

Rotterdam.  The  Red  Sea  line  passes  along  the  shores  of  Ara- 
bia, -where  there  is  comparatively  little  local  trade  ;  the  Persian 
Gulf  route  would  develop  the  remarkable  wealth  of  Persia,  and 
would  carry  to  Europe  a  local  commerce  already  great.  At  the 
entrance  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  near  Cape  Mussendoom  or  Or- 
muz,  we  should  establish  a  free  port  on  the  plan  of  Singapore. 
In  1000  a.d.  the  spot  now  known  as  Ormuz  was  a  barren  rock, 
but  a  few  years  of  permanent  occupation  of  the  spot  as  a  free 
port  changed  the  barren  islet  into  one  of  the  wealthiest  cities 
in  the  world.  The  Red  Sea  route  crosses  Egypt,  the  direct 
route  crosses  Turkey ;  and  it  can  not  be  too  strongly  urged 
that  in  war-time  "  Egypt "  means  Russia  or  France,  w'hile 
"  Turkey  "  means  Great  Britain. 

In  any  scheme  of  a  Constantinople  and  Gulf  railroad  Kur- 
rachee  would  play  a  leading  part.  Not  only  the  wheat  and 
the  cotton  of  the  Punjaub  and  of  the  then  irrigated  Scinde, 
but  the  trade  of  Central  Asia,  would  flow  down  the  Indus,  and 
it  is  hardly  too  much  to  believe  that  the  silks  of  China,  the 
teas  of  Northern  India,  and  the  shawls  of  Cashmere  will  all 
of  them  one  day  find  in  Kurrachee  their  chief  port.  The 
earliest  known  overland  route  was  that  by  the  Persian  Gulf. 
Chinese  ships  traded  to  Ormuz  in  the  fifth  and  seventh  cen- 
turies, bringing  silk  and  iron,  and  it  maybe  doubted  whether 
any  of  the  Russian  routes  will  be  able  to  compete  with  the 
more  ancient  Euphrates  Valley  line  of  trade.  Shorter,  pass- 
ing through  countries  well  known  and  comparatively  civilized, 
admitting  at  once  of  the  use  of  land  and  water  transport  side 
by  side,  it  is  far  superior  in  commercial  and  political  advan- 
tages to  any  of  the  Russian  desert  roads.  A  route  through 
Upper  Persia  has  been  proposed,  but  merchants  of  experience 
will  tell  you  that  greater  facilities  for  trade  are  extended  to 
Europeans  in  even  the  "  closed  "  ports  of  China  than  upon 
the  coasts  of  Persia,  and  the  prospect  of  the  freedom  of  trade 
upon  a  Persian  railroad  would  be  b\it  a  bad  one,  it  may  be 
feared. 

The  return  of  trade  to  the  Gulf  route  will  revive  the  glory 
of  many  fallen  cities  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Ormuz  and  Anti- 
och,  Cyprus  and  Rhodes,  have  a  second  history  before  them ; 
Crete,  Brindisi,  and  Venice  will  each  obtain  a  renewal  of  their 
ancient  fame.     Alexander  of  Macedon  was  the  first  man  who 


Overland  Routes.  505 

took  a  scientific  view  of  the  importance  of  the  Gulf  route,  but 
we  have  hitherto  drawn  but  little  profit  from  the  lesson  con- 
tained in  his  commission  to  Nearchus  to  survey  the  coast  from 
the  Indus  to  the  Euphrates.  The  advantage  to  be  gained 
from  the  completion  of  the  railway  from  Constantinople  to 
the  Persian  Gulf  will  not  fall  only  to  the  share  of  India  and 
Great  Britain.  Holland  and  Belgium  are,  in  proportion  to 
their  wealth,  at  least  as  greatly  interested  in  the  Euphrates 
route  as  are  we  ourselves,  and  should  join  us  in  its  construc- 
tion. The  Dutch  trade  with  Java  would  be  largely  benefited, 
and  Dutch  ports  would  become  the  shipping-places  for  East- 
ern merchandise  on  its  way  to  England  and  North-eastern 
America,  while  to  the  cheap  manufactures  of  Liege,  India, 
China,  and  Central  Asia  would  afford  the  best  of  markets. 
If  the  line  were  a  double  one  to  the  west  and  north  of  Aleppo, 
one  branch  running  to  Constantinople  and  the  other  to  the 
Mediterranean  at  Scanderoon,  the  whole  of  Europe  would  ben- 
efit by  the  Persian  trade,  and,  in  gaining  the  Persian  trade, 
would  gain  also  the  power  of  protecting  Persia  against  Russia, 
and  of  thus  preventing  the  dominance  of  a  crushing  despotism 
throughout  the  Eastern  world.  In  a  thousand  ways,  however, 
the  advantages  of  the  line  to  all  Europe  are  so  plainly  mani- 
fest that  the  only  question  worth  discussi  ig  is  the  nature  of 
the  difficulties  that  hinder  its  completion. 

The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  the  Gulf  route  are  political 
and  financial,  and  both  have  been  exaggerated  without  limit. 
The  project  for  a  railway  from  Constantinople  to  the  Persian 
Gulf  has  been  compared  to  that  for  the  construction  of  a  rail- 
road from  the  Missouri  to  the  Pacific.  In  1858  the  American 
line  was  looked  on  as  a  mere  speculator's  dream,  while  the 
Euphrates  Railway  was  to  be  commenced  at  once :  ten  years 
have  passed,  and  the  Pacific  Railway  is  a  fact,  while  the  Indian 
line  has  been  forgotten. 

It  is  not  that  the  making  of  the  Euphrates  line  is  a  more 
difficult  matter  than  that  of  crossing  the  Plains  and  Rocky 
Mountains.  The  distance  from  St.  Louis  to  San  Francisco  is 
1600  miles,  and  that  from  Constantinople  to  Bussorah  is  but 
1100  miles;  or  from  Scanderoon  to  Bussorah  only  TOO  miles. 
From  London  to  the  Persian  Gulf  is  not  so  far  as  from  New 
York  to  San  Francisco.     The  American  line  had  to  cross  two 

Y 


500  G heater  Britain. 

great  snowy  chains  and  a  waterless  tract  of  considerable 
width  :  the  Indian  route  crosses  no  passes  so  lofty  as  those  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains  or  so  difficult  as  those  of  the  Sierra  Neva- 
da, and  is  well  watered  in  its  whole  length.  On  the  American 
line  there  is  little  coal,  if  any,  while  the  Euphrates  route  would 
be  plentifully  supplied  with  coal  from  the  neighborhood  of 
Bagdad.  When  the  American  line  was  commenced  the  pro- 
posed track  lay  across  unknown  wilds :  the  Constantinople 
and  Persian  Gulf  route  passes  through  venerable  towns,  the 
most  ancient  of  all  the  cities  of  the  world,  and  the  route  it- 
self is  the  oldest  known  highway  of  trade.  The  chief  of  all 
the  advantages  possessed  by  the  Indian  line  which  is  wanting 
in  America  is  the  presence  of  ample  labor  on  all  parts  of  the 
road.  Steamers  are  already  running  from  Bombay  and  Kur- 
rachee  to  the  Persian  Gulf ;  others  on  the  Tigris  and  a  por- 
tion of  the  Euphrates  ;  there  is  a  much-used  road  from  Bag- 
dad to  Aleppo,  and  a  Turkish  military  road  from  Aleppo  to 
Constantinople,  to  which  city  a  direct  railroad  will  soon  be 
opened ;  and  a  telegraph  line  belonging  to  an  English  com- 
pany already  crosses  Asian  Turkey  from  end  to  end.  Not- 
withstanding the  facilities,  the  Euphrates  Railway  is  still  a 
project,  while  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  line  will  be  opened  in 
18<0. 

Were  the  financial  difficulties  those  which  the  supporters 
of  the  line  have  in  reality  to  meet,  it  might  be  urged  that 
there  will  be  a  great  local  traffic  between  Bussorah,  Bagdad, 
and  Aleppo,  and  from  all  these  cities  to  the  sea,  and  that  the 
Government  mail  subsidies  will  be  huge,  and  the  Indian  trade, 
even  in  the  worst  of  years,  considerable.  Were  the  indiffer- 
ence of  Belgium,  Germany,  and  Holland  such  that  they  should 
refuse  to  contribute  toward  the  cost  of  the  line,  its  importance 
would  amply  warrant  a  moderate  addition  to  the  debt  of  India. 

The  real  difficulties  that  have  to  be  encountered  are  polit- 
ical rather  than  financial ;  the  covert  opposition  of  France  and 
Egypt  is  not  less  powerful  for  evil  than  is  the  open  hostility 
of  Russia.  Happily  for  India,  however,  the  territories  of  our 
ally  Turkey  extend  to  the  Persian  Gulf,  for  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  for  railway  purposes  Turkish  rule,  if  we  so  please, 
is  equivalent  to  English  rule.  As  it  happens,  no  active  meas- 
ures are  needed  to  advance  our  line,  but  were  it  otherwise, 


Overland  Koutes.  507 

such  intervention  as  might  be  necessary  to  secure  the  safety 
of  the  great  highway  for  Eastern  trade  with  Europe  would 
be  defensible  were  it  exerted  toward  a  purely  independent 
Government. 

The  pressure  to  be  put  upon  the  Ottoman  Porte  must  be 
direct  and  governmental.  For  a  private  company  to  conduct 
a  great  enterprise  to  a  successful  conclusion  in  Eastern  coun- 
tries is  always  difficult ;  but  when  the  matter  is  political  in 
its  nature,  or,  if  commercial,  at  least  hindered  on  political 
grounds,  a  private  company  is  powerless.  It  is,  moreover,  the 
practice  of  Eastern  Governments  to  grant  concessions  of  im- 
portant works  which  they  can  not  openly  oppose,  but  which  in 
truth  they  wish  to  hinder,  to  companies  so  formed  as  to  be 
incapable  of  proceeding  with  the  undertaking.  When  others 
apply,  the  Government  answers  them  that  nothing  further  can 
be  done  :  "  the  concession  is  already  granted." 

Whatever  steps  arc  taken,  a  bold  front  is  needed.  It  might 
even  be  advisable  that  we  should  declare  that  the  Euphrates 
Valley  railway  through  the  Turkish  territory  from  Constan- 
tinople and  Scanderoon  through  Aleppo  to  Bagdad  and  Bus- 
sorah,  and  sufficient  military  posts  to  insure  its  security  in 
time  of  war,  are  necessary  to  our  tenure  of  India,  and  that  we 
should  call  upon  Turkey  to  grant  us  permission  to  commence 
our  work  on  pain  of  the  withdrawal  of  our  protection. 

Our  general  principle  of  non-interference  is  always  liable  to 
be  set  aside  on  proof  of  the  existence  of  a  higher  necessity  for 
intervention  than  for  adherence  to  our  golden  rule,  and  it  may 
be  contended  that  sufficient  proof  has  been  shown  in  the  pres- 
ent instance.  Whether  public  action  is  to  be  taken,  or  the 
matter  to  be  left  to  private  enterprise,  it  is  hard  to  resist  the 
conclusion  that  the  direct  route  to  India  is  one  of  the  most 
pressing  of  the  questions  of  the  day. 

When,  in  company  with  my  fellow-passengers  from  Moul- 
tan,  I  left  Kurrachee  for  Bombay,  we  had  on  board  the  then 
Commissioner  of  Scinde,  who  was  on  his  way  to  take  his  seat 
as  a  member  of  Council  at  Bombay.  A  number  of  the  lead- 
ing men  of  Scinde  came  on  board  to  bid  farewell  to  him  be- 
fore he  sailed,  and  among  them  the  royal  brothers  who,  but 
for  our  annexation  of  the  country,  would  be  the  reigning 
Ameers  at  this  moment. 


508  Greater  Britain. 

Nothing  that  I  had  seen  in  India,  even  at  TTmritsur,  sur- 
passed in  glittering  pomp  the  caps  and  baldricks  of  these  Scin- 
dee  chieftains ;  neither  could  any  thing  be  stranger  than  their 
dress.  One  had  on  a  silk  coat  of  pale  green  shot  with  yellow, 
satin  trowsers,  and  velvet  slippers  with  curled  peaks ;  another 
wore  a  jacket  of  dark  amber  with  flowers  in  white  lace.  A 
third  was  clothed  in  a  cloth  of  crimson  striped  with  amber ; 
and  the  Ameer  himself  was  wearing  a  tunic  of  scarlet  silk  and 
gold  and  a  scarf  of  purple  gauze.  All  wore  the  strange-shaped 
Scindian  hat;  all  had  jewelled  dirks,  with  curiously-wrought 
scabbards  to  hold  their  swords,  and  gorgeously-embroidered 
baldricks  to  support  them.  The  sight,  however,  of  no  number 
of  sapphires,  turquoises,  and  gold  clothes  could  have  recon- 
ciled me  to  a  longer  detention  in  Kurrachee ;  so  I  rejoiced 
when  our  bespangled  friends  disappeared  over  the  ship's  side 
to  the  sound  of  the  Lascars'  anchor-tripping  chorus,  and  left 
the  deck  to  the  "  proconsul "  and  ourselves. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

BOMBAY. 


Crossing  the  mouths  of  the  Gulfs  of  dutch  and  Cambay, 
we  reached  Bombay  in  little  more  than  two  days  from  Kur- 
rachee ;  but  as  we  rounded  Colaba  Point  and  entered  the  har- 
bor the  setting  sun  was  lighting  up  the  distant  ranges  of  the 
Western  Ghauts,  and  by  the  time  we  had  dropped  anchor  it 
was  dark,  so  I  slept  on  board. 

I  woke  to  find  the  day  breaking  over  the  peaked  mount- 
ains of  the  Deccan,  and  revealing  the  wooded  summits  of  the 
islands,  while  a  light  land-breeze  rippled  the  sia-face  of  the 
Avater,  and  the  bay  was  alive  with  the  bright  lateen  sails  of 
the  native  cotton-boats.  The  many  woods  coming  down  in 
rich  green  masses  into  the  sea  itself  lent  a  singular  softness 
to  the  view,  and  the  harbor  echoed  with  the  capstan-songs  of 
all  nations,  from  the  American  to  the  Beloochee,  from  the 
Swedish  to  the  Greek. 

The  vegetation  that  surrounds  the  harbor,  though  the  even 
mass  of  green  is  broken  here  and  there  by  the  crimson  cones 
of  the  "  gold  niohur  "  trees,  resemhles  that  of  Ceylon,  and  the 


Bombay.  500 

scene  is  rather  tropical  than  Indian,  but  there  is  nothing  trop- 
ical and  little  that  is  Eastern  in  the  bustle  of  the  bay.  The 
lines  of  huge  steamers,  and  forests  of  masts  backed  by  the 
still  more  crowded  field  of  roofs  and  towers,  impress  you  with 
a  sense  of  wealth  and  worldliness  from  which  you  gladly  seek 
relief  by  turning  toward  the  misty  beauty  of  the  mountain 
islands  and  the  Western  Ghauts.  Were  the  harbor  smaller 
it  would  be  lovely ;  as  it  is,  the  distances  are  over-great. 

Notwithstanding  its  vast  trade,  Bombay  for  purposes  of 
defense  is  singularly  weak.  The  absence  of  batteries  from 
the  entrance  to  so  great  a  trading-port  strikes  eyes  that  have 
seen  San  Francisco  and  New  York,  and  the  marks  on  the  sea- 
wall of  Bombay  Castle  of  the  cannon-balls  of  the  African  ad- 
mirals of  the  Mogul  should  be  a  warning  to  the  Bombay  mer- 
chants to  fortify  their  port  against  attacks  by  sea,  but  act  as 
a  reminder  to  the  traveller  that,  from  a  military  point  of  view, 
Kurrachee  is  a  better  harbor  than  Bombay,  the  approach  to 
which  can  easily  be  cut  off,  and  its  people  starved.  One  ad- 
vantage, however,  of  the  erection  of  batteries  at  the  harbor's 
mouth  would  be,  that  the  present  fort  might  be  pulled  down, 
unless  it  were  thought  advisable  to  retain  it  for  the  protection 
of  the  Europeans  against  riots,  and  that  in  any  case  the  broad 
space  of  cleared  ground  which  now  cuts  the  town  in  half 
might  be  partly  built  on. 

The  present  remarkable  prosperity  of  Bombay  is  the  result 
of  the  late  increase  in  the  cotton-trade,  to  the  sudden  decline 
of  which,  in  18G5  and  1866,  has  also  been  attributed  the  ruin 
that  fell  upon  the  city  in  the  last-named  year.  The  panic, 
from  which  Bombay  has  now  so  far  recovered  that  it  can  no 
longer  be  said  that  she  has  "  not  one  merchant  solvent,"  was 
chiefly  a  reaction  from  a  speculation-madness,  in  which  the 
shares  in  a  land  reclamation  company  which  never  commenced 
its  operations  once  touched  a  thousand  per  cent.,  but  was  in- 
tensified by  the  passage  of  the  English  panic-wave  of  1866 
across  India  and  round  the  world. 

Not  even  invMississippi  is  cotton  more  completely  king 
than  in  Bombay.  Cotton  has  collected  the  hundred  steamers 
and  the  thousands  of  native  boats  that  are  anchored  between 
the  Apollo  Bunder  and  Mazagon ;  cotton  has  built  the  great 
offices  and  stores  of  seven  and  eight  stories  high ;  cotton  has 


510  Greater  Britain. 

furnished  the  villas  on  Malabar  Hill,  that  resemble  the  New 
Yorkers'  cottages  on  Staten  Island. 

The  export  of  cotton  from  India  rose  from  five  millions' 
worth  in  1859  to  thirty-eight  millions'  worth  in  18G4,  and  the 
total  exports  of  Bombay  increased  in  the  same  proportion, 
while  the  population  of  the  city  rose  from  400,000  to  1,000,000. 
We  are  accustomed  to  look  at  the  East  as  standing  still,  but 
Chicago  itself  never  took  a  grander  leap  than  did  Bombay 
between  18G0  and  1864.  The  rebellion  in  America  gave  the 
impetus,  but  was  not  the  sole  cause  of  this  prosperity ;  and 
the  Indian  cotton-trade,  though  checked  by  the  peace,  is  not 
destroyed.  Cotton  and  jute  are  not  the  only  Indian  raw  prod- 
ucts the  export  of  which  has  increased  suddenly  of  late.  The 
export  of  wool  increased  twentyfold,  of  tobacco  threefold, 
of  coffee  sevenfold  in  the  last  six  years ;  and  the  export  of 
Indian  tea  increased  in  five  years  from  nothing  to  three  or 
four  hundred  thousand  pounds.  The  old  Indian  exports, 
those  which  we  associate  with  the  term  "  Eastern  trade,"  are 
standing  still,  while  the  raw  produce  trade  is  thus  increasing : 
spices,  elephants'  teeth,  pearls,  jewels,  bandanas,  shellac,  dates, 
and  gum  are  all  decreasing,  although  the  total  exports  of  the 
country  have  trebled  in  five  years. 

India  needs  but  railroads  to  enable  her  to  compete  success- 
fully with  America  in  the  growth  of  cotton,  but  the  develop- 
ment of.  the  one  raw  product  will  open  out  her  hitherto  un- 
known resources. 

"While  staying  at  one  of  the  great  merchant-houses  in  the 
fort  I  was  able  to  see  that  the  commerce  of  Bombay  has  not 
grown  up  of  itself.  With  some  experience  among  hard  work- 
ers in  the  English  towns,  I  was  nevertheless  astonished  at  the 
work  got  through  by  senior  clerks  and  junior  partners  at 
Bombay.  Although  at  first  led  away  by  the  idea  that  men 
who  wear  white  linen  suits  all  day,  and  smoke  in  rocking- 
chairs  upon  the  balcony  for  an  hour  after  breakfast,  can  not 
be  said  to  get  through  much  work,  I  soon  found  that  men  in 
merchants'  houses  at  Bombay  work  harder  than  they  would 
be  likely  to  do  at  home.  Their  day  begins  at  G  a.m.,  and,  as 
a  rule,  they  work  from  then  till  dinner  at  8  or  9  p.m.,  taking 
an  hour  for  breakfast,  and  two  for  tiffin*  My  stay  at  Bombay 
was   during   the  hottest  fortnight  in  the  year,  and  twelvo 


Bombay.  511 

hours'  work  in  the  clay,  with  the  thermometer  never  under 
90°  all  the  night,  is  an  exhausting  life.  Englishmen  could 
not  long  survive  the  work,  but  the  Bombay  merchants  are  all 
Scotch.  In  British  settlements,  from  Canada  to  Ceylon,  from 
Duncdin  to  Bombay,  for  every  Englishman  that  you  meet 
who  has  worked  himself  up  to  wealth  from  small  beginnings 
Avithout  external  aid  you  find  ten  Scotchmen.  It  is  strange, 
indeed,  that  Scotland  has  not  become  the  popular  name  for 
the  United  Kingdom. 

Bombay  life  is  not  without  its  compensation.  It  is  not  al- 
ways May  or  June,  and  from  November  to  March  the  climate 
is  all  but  perfect.  Even  in  the  hottest  weather  the  Byculla 
Club  is  cool,  and  Mahabaleswar  is  close  at  hand,  for  short  ex- 
cursions, whenever  the  time  is  found  ;  while  the  Bombay  man- 
go is  a  fruit  which  may  bear  comparison  Avith  the  peaches  of 
Salt  Lake  City  or  the  melons  of  San  Francisco.  The  Bom- 
bay merchants  have  not  time,  indeed,  to  enjoy  the  beauties  of 
their  city,  any  more  than  Londoners  have  to  visit  Westmin- 
ster Abbey  or  explore  the  Toavci*  ;  and  as  for  "  tropical  indo- 
lence,1' or  "  Anglo-Indian  luxury,"  the  bull-dogs  are  the  only 
members  of  the  English  community  in  India  Avho  can  dis- 
cover any  thing  but  half-concealed  hardships  in  the  life.  Each 
dog  has  his  servant  to  attend  to  all  his  Avants,  and,  knowing 
this,  the  cunning  brute  always  makes  the  boy  carry  him  up 
the  long  flights  of  stairs  that  lead  to  the  private  rooms  over 
the  merchants'  houses  in  the  fort. 

Bombay  bazar  is  the  gayest  of  gay  scenes.  Besides  the 
ordinary  croAvd  of  any  "  native  town "  there  are  solemn 
Jains,  copper-colored  JeAvs,  Avhite-coated  Portuguese,  Per- 
sians, Arabs,  Catholic  priests,  bespangled  nautch  girls,  and 
grinning  Seedees.  The  Parsees  are  strongest  of  all  the  mer- 
chant peoples  of  Bombay  in  numbers,  in  intelligence,  and  in 
Avealth.  Among  the  shop-keepers  of  their  race  there  is  an 
over-prominence  of  trade  shrewdness  in  the  expression  of  the 
face  and  in  the  shape  even  of  the  head.  The  Louvre  bust  of 
Richelieu,  in  which  Ave  have  the  ideal  of  a  Avheedler,  is  a  com- 
mon type  in  the  Parsee  shops  of  the  Bombay  bazar.  The 
Parses  people,  hoAvever,  Avhatever  their  looks,  are  not  only  in 
complete  possession  of  Bombay,  but  are  the  dark-skinned  race 
to  Avhich  Ave  shall  have  to  intrust  the  largest  share  in  the  re- 


512  Greater  Britain. 

generation  of  the  East.  Trading  as  they  do  in  every  city  be- 
tween Galle  and  Astrakan,  but  everywhere  attached  to  the 
English  rule,  they  bear  to  us  the  relative  position  that  the 
Greeks  occupy  toward  Russia. 

Both  in  religion  and  in  education  the  Parsees  are,  as  a  com- 
munity, far  in  advance  of  the  Indian  Mohammedans  and  of 
the  Hindoos.  Their  creed  has  become  a  pure  deism,  in  which 
God's  works  are  worshiped  as  the  manifestations  or  visible 
representatives  of  God  on  earth,  fire,  the  sun  and  the  sea 
taking  the  first  places ;  although  in  the  climate  of  Bombay 
prayers  to  the  sun  must  be  made  up  of  more  supplications 
than  thanksgivings.  The  Parsee  men  are  soundly  taught,  and 
there  is  not  a  paxiper  in  the  whole  tribe.  In  the  education  and 
elevation  of  women  no  Eastern  race  has  as  yet  done  much, 
but  the  Parsees  have  done  the  most  and  have  paved  the  way 
for  further  progress. 

In  the  matter  of  the  seclusion  of  women,  the  Parsee  move- 
ment has  had  some  effect  even  upon  others  than  Parsees,  and 
the  Hindoos  of  Bombay  city  stand  far  before  even  those  of 
Calcutta  in  the  earnestness  and  success  of  their  endeavors  to 
promote  the  moral  elevation  of  women.  Nothing  can  be  done 
toward  the  regeneration  of  India  so  long  as  the  women  of  all 
classes  remain  in  their  present  degradation;  and  although 
many  native  gentlemen  in  Bombay  already  recognize  the  fact, 
and  act  upon  it,  progress  is  slow,  since  there  is  no  basis  upon 
which  to  begin.  The  Hindoos  will  not  send  their  wives  to 
schools  where  there  are  European  lady  teachers  for  fear  of 
proselytism  taking  place,  and  native  women  teachers  are  not 
yet  to  be  found ;  hence  all  teaching  must  needs  be  left  to 
men.  Nothing,  moreover,  can  be  done  with  female  children 
in  Western  India,  where  girls  are  married  at  from  five  to 
twelve  years  old. 

I  had  not  been  two  days  in  Bombay  when  a  placard  caught 
my  eye,  announcing  a  performance  at  the  theatre  of  "  Romeo 
and  Juliet,  in  the  Maratta  tongue;"  but  the  play  had  no 
Friar  Lawrence,  no  apothecary,  and  no  nurse ;  it  was  nothing 
but  a  simple  Maratta  love-tale,  followed  by  some  religious 
tableaux.  In  the  first  piece  an  Englishman  was  introduced, 
and  represented  as  kicking  every  native  that  crossed  his  path 
with  the  exclamation  of  "  Damned  fool :"  at  each  repetition 


The  MouuiiitUM.  513 

of  which  the  whole  house  laughed.  It  is  to  be  feared  that 
this  portion  of  the  play  was  "  founded  upon  fact."  On  my 
way  home  through  the  native  town  at  night  I  came  on  a  mar- 
riage procession  better  than  any  that  I  had  seen.  A  band  of 
fifers  were  screaming  the  most  piercing  of  notes  in  front  of 
an  illuminated  house,  at  which  the  horsemen  and  carriages 
were  just  arriving,  both  men  and  women  clothed  in  jewelled 
robes  and  silks  of  a  hundred  colors,  that  flashed  and  glittered 
in  the  blaze  of  the  red  torches.  The  procession,  like  the 
greater  number  of  the  most  gorgeous  ceremonials  of  Bombay, 
was  conducted  by  Parsees  to  celebrate  the  marriage  of  one 
of  their  own  people:  but  it  is  a  curious  fact  that  night-mar- 
riages were  forced  upon  the  Parsees  by  the  Hindoos,  and  one  of 
the  conditions  upon  which  the  Parsees  were  received  into  India 
was,  that  their  marriage  processions  should  take  place  at  night. 
The  Caves  of  Elephanta  have  been  many  times  described. 
The  grandest  sight  of  India,  after  the  Taj,  is  the  three-faced 
bust  of  the  Hindoo  Trinity,  or  God  in  his  threefold  character 
of  Creator,  Preserver,  and  Destroyer.  No  Grecian  sculpture 
that  I  have  seen  so  well  conveys  the  idea  of  Godhead.  The 
Greeks  could  idealize  man,  the  Italians  can  paint  the  saint, 
but  the  builders  of  Elephanta  had  the  power  of  executing  the 
highest  ideal  of  a  pagan  god.  The  repose  which  distinguishes 
the  heads  of  the  Creator  and  Preserver  is  not  the  meditation 
of  the  saint,  but  the  calm  of  unbounded  power ;  and  the  De- 
stroyer's head  portends  not  destruction  so  much  as  annihila- 
tion to  the  world.  The  central  head  is,  in  its  mysterious  so- 
lemnity, that  which  the  Sphinx  should  be  and  is  not ;  but  one 
attribute  alone  is  common  to  the  expression  of  all  three  faces — 
the  presence  of  the  Inscrutable. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE    MOHUERUM. 


Although  Poonah  is  the  ancient  Maratta  capital  and  a 
thoroughly  Hindoo  city,  it  is  famed  throughout  India  for  the 
splendor  with  which  its  people  celebrate  the  Mohammedan 
Mohurrum,  so  I  timed  my  visit  in  such  a  way  as  to  reach  the 
town  upon  the  day  of  the  "  taboot  procession." 

Y  2 


514  Greater  Britain. 

The  ascent  from  the  Konkan,  or  flat  country  of  Bombay, 
by  the  Western  Ghauts  to  the  table-land  of  the  Deccan,  known 
as  the  Bhore  Ghaut  incline,  in  which  the  railway  rises  from 
the  plain  2000  feet  into  the  Deccan,  by  a  series  of  steps  six- 
teen miles  in  length,  is  far  more  striking  as  an  engineering 
work  than  the  passage  of  the  Alleghanies  on  the  Baltimore 
and  Ohio  track,  and  as  much  inferior  to  the  Sierra  Nevada 
railway  works.  The  views  from  the  carriage  windows  are 
singularly  like  those  in  the  Kaduganava  Pass  between  Co- 
lumbo  and  Kandy ;  in  fact,  the  Western  Ghauts  are  of  the 
same  character  as  the  mountains  of  Ceylon,  the  hills  being  al- 
most invariably  flat-topped  or  else  rent  by  volcanic  action  into 
great  pinnacles  and  needle  peaks. 

The  rainy  season  had  not  commenced,  and  the  vegetation 
that  gives  the  Ghauts  their  charm  was  wanting,  although  the 
"  mango  showers  "  were  beginning,  and  spiders  and  other  in- 
sects, unseen  during  the  hot  weather,  were  creeping  into  the 
houses  to  seek  shelter  from  the  rains.  One  of  the  early  trav- 
ellers to  the  Deccan  told  the  good  folks  at  home  that  after  the 
rains  the  spiders'  webs  were  so  thickly  laced  across  the  jun- 
gle that  the  natives  of  the  country  were  in  the  habit  of  hiring 
elephants  to  walk  before  them  and  force  a  passage !  At  the 
time  of  my  visit  neither  webs  nor  jungle  were  to  be  seen,  and 
the  spiders  were  very  harmless-looking  fellows.  One  effect 
of  the  approaching  monsoon  was  visible  from  the  summit  of 
the  Ghaut,  for  the  bases  of  the  mountains  were  hid  by  the 
low  clouds  that  foretell  the  coming  rains.  The  inclines  are 
held  to  be  unsafe  during  the  monsoon,  but  they  are  not  so  bad 
as  the  Kotree  and  Kurrachee  line,  which  runs  only  "  weather 
permitting,"  and  is  rendered  useless  by  two  hours'  rain — a  fall 
which,  luckily  for  the  shareholders,  occurs  only  about  once  in 
every  seven  years.  On  the  Bhore  Ghaut,  on  the  contrary,  220 
inches  in  four  months  is  not  unusual,  and  "  the  rains  "  here 
take  the  place  of  the  avalanche  of  colder  ranges,  and  carry 
away  bridges,  lines,  and  trains  themselves ;  but  in  the  dry 
season  there  is  a  want  of  the  visible  presence  of  difficulties 
overcome,  which  detracts  from  the  interest  of  the  line. 

At  daybreak  at  Poonah  the  tomtoming,  which  had  lasted 
without  intermission  through  the  ten  days'  fast,  came  to  a 
sudden  end,  and  the  police  and  European  magistrates  began 


The  MoiiuuiiUM.  515 

to  marshal  the  procession  of  the  taboots,  or  shrines,  in  the 
bazar. 

A  proclamation  in  English  and  Maratta  was  posted  on  the 
walls,  announcing  the  order  of  the  procession  and  the  rules  to 
be  enforced.  The  orders  were,  that  the  procession  to  the 
river  was  to  commence  at  7  a.m.  and  to  end  at  11  a.m.,  and 
that  tomtoming,  except  during  those  hours,  would  not  be  al- 
lowed. The  taboots  of  the  light  cavalry,  of  three  regiments 
of  native  infantry,  and  of  the  followers  of  three  English  regi- 
ments of  the  line,  and  of  the  Sappers  and  Miners,  were,  how- 
ever, to  start  at  six  o'clock :  the  order  of  precedence  among 
the  cantonment  or  regimental  taboots  was  carefully  laid  down, 
and  the  carrying  of  arms  forbidden. 

"When  I  reached  the  bazar,  I  found  the  native  police  were 
working  in  vain  in  trying  to  force  into  line  a  vast  throng  of 
bannermen,  drummers,  and  saints  who  surrounded  the  various 
taboots  or  models  of  the  house  of  Ali  and  Fatima  where  their 
sons  Hassan  and  Hoosein  were  born.  Some  of  the  shrines 
were  of  the  size  and  make  of  the  dolls'-houses  of  our  English 
children,  others  in  their  height  and  gorgeousness  resembled 
the  most  successful  of  our  burlesques  upon  Guy  Fawkes : 
some  were  borne  on  litters  by  four  men,  others  mounted  on 
light  carts  and  drawn  by  bullocks,  while  the  gigantic  taboot 
of  the  Third  Cavalry  required  six  buffaloes  for  its  transport 
to  the  river.  Many  privates  of  our  native  infantry  regiments 
had  joined  the  procession  in  uniform,  and  it  was  as  strange  to 
me  to  see  privates  in  our  service  engaged  in  howling  round  a 
sort  of  Maypole,  and  accompanying  their  yells  with  the  tom- 
tom, as  it  must  have  been  to  the  English  in  Lucknow  in  1857 
to  hear  the  bands  of  the  rebel  regiments  playing  "  Cheer, 
boys,  cheer." 

Some  of  the  troops  in  Poonah  were  kept  within  their  lines 
all  day,  to  be  ready  to  suppress  disturbances  caused  by  the 
Moslem  fanatics,  who,  excited  by  the  Mohurrum,  often  run 
a-muck  among  their  Hindoo  neighbors.  In  old  times  quarrels 
between  the  Sonnites  and  Shiites,  or  orthodox  and  dissenting 
Mussulmans,  used  to  be  added  to  those  between  Mohammedans 
and.  Hindoos  at  the  season  of  the  Mohurrum,  but  except  upon 
the  Afghan  border  these  feuds  have  all  but  died  out  now. 

At  the  head  of  the  procession  marched  a  row  of  pipers, 


516  Greater  Britain. 

producing  sounds  of  which  no  Highland  regiment  would  have 
felt  ashamed,  followed  by  long-bearded,  turban-wearing  Ma- 
rattas,  on  foot  and  horseback,  surrounding  an  immense  pagoda- 
shaped  taboot  placed  on  a  cart  and  drawn  by  bullocks ;  boys 
swinging  incense  walked  before  and  followed,  and  I  remarked 
a  gigantic  cross — a  loan,  no  doubt,  from  the  Jesuit  College 
for  this  Mohammedan  festivity.  After  each  taboot  there 
came  a  band  of  Hindoo  "  tigers,"  men  painted  in  thorough 
imitation  of  the  jungle  king,  and  wearing  tiger  ears  and  tails. 
Sometimes,  instead  of  tigers,  we  had  men  painted  in  the  colors 
worn  by  "  sprites  "  in  an  English  pantomime,  and  all — sprites 
and  tigers — danced  in  the  fashion  of  the  mediaeval  mummers. 
Behind  the  tigers  and  buffoons  there  followed  women  walking 
in  their  richest  dress.  The  nautch  girls  of  Poonah  arc  reputed 
the  best  in  all  the  East,  but  the  monotonous  Bombay  nautch 
is  not  to  be  compared  with  the  Cashmere  nautch  of  Lahore. 

Some  taboots  were  guarded  on  either  side  by  sheiks  on 
horseback,  wearing  turbans  of  the  honorable  green  which  de- 
notes direct  descent  from  the  Prophet,  though  the  genealogy 
is  sometimes  doubtful,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Angel  Gabriel, 
who,  according  to  Mohammedan  writers,  wears  a  gieen  tur- 
ban, being  an  "  honorary  "  descendant  of  Mohammed. 

Thousands  of  men  and  women  thronged  the  road  down 
which  the  taboots  were  forced  to  pass,  or  sat  in  the  shade  of 
the  peepul  trees  until  the  taboot  of  their  family  or  street 
came  up,  and  then  followed  it,  dancing  and  tomtom-beating 
like  the  rest. 

Poonah  is  famed  for  the  grace  of  its  women  and  the  ele- 
gance of  their  gait.  In  the  hot  weather  the  saree  is  the  sole  gar- 
ment of  the  Hindoo  women,  and  lends  grace  to  the  form  with- 
out concealing  the  outlines  of  the  trunk  or  the  comely  shapes 
of  the  well-turned  limbs.  The  saree  is  eight  yards  long,  but 
of  such  soft  thin  texture  that  it  makes  no  show  upon  the  per- 
son. It  is  a  singular  testimony  to  the  strength  of  Hindoo 
habits  that  at  this  Mohammedan  festival  the  Mohammedan 
women  should  all  be  wearing  the  long  seamless  saree  of  the 
conquered  Hindoos. 

In  the  Mohurrum  procession  at  Poonah  there  was  nothing 
distinctively  Mohammedan.  Hindoos  joined  in  the  festivities, 
and  "  Portuguese,"  or  descendants  of  the  slaves,  half-castes, 


The  Mohurhum.  517 

and  native  Christians  who  at  the  time  of  the  Portuguese  oc- 
cupation of  Surat  assumed  high-sounding  names  and  titles, 
and  now  form  a  large  proportion  of  the  inhabitants  of  towns 
in  the  Bombay  Presidency.  The  temptation  of  a  ten  days' 
holiday  is  too  great  to  be  resisted  by  the  prejudices  of  even 
the  Christians  or  Hindoos. 

The  procession  ended  at  the  Ghauts  on  the  river-side,  where 
the  taboots,  one  after  the  other,  made  their  exit  from  ten  days 
of  glory  into  unfathomable  slush ;  and  such  was  the  number 
of  the  "  camp  taboots,"  as  those  of  the  native  soldiers  in  our 
service  are  styled,  and  the  "  bazar  taboots,"  or  city  contribu- 
tions, that  the  immersion  ceremonies  were  not  completed  when 
the  illumination  and  fire-works  commenced. 

After  dark  the  bazar  was  lit  with  colored  fires  and  with 
the  ghostly  paper-lanterns  that  give  no  light ;  and  the  noise 
of  tomtoms  and  fire-crackers  recommenced  in  spite  of  proc- 
lamations and  police-rules.  Were  there  in  Indian  streets 
any  thing  to  burn,  the  Mohurrum  would  cause  as  many  fires 
in  Hindostan  as  Independence  Day  in  the  United  States ;  but 
although  houses  are  burned  out  daily  in  the  bazars  they  are 
never  burned  down,  for  nothing  but  water  can  damage  mud. 
We  could  have  played  our  way  into  Lucknow  in  1857  with 
pumps  and  hose  at  least  as  fast  as  we  contrived  to  batter  a 
road  into  it  with  shot  and  shell. 

During  the  day  I  had  been  amused  with  the  sayings  of 
some  British  recruits  who  were  watching  the  immersion  cere- 
monies, but  in  the  evening  one  of  them  was  in  the  bazar,  up- 
roariously drunk,  kicking  every  native  against  whom  he  stum- 
bled, and  shouting  to  an  officer  of  another  regiment,  who  did 
not  like  to  interfere  :  "  I'm  a  private  soldier,  I  know,  but  I'm 
a  gentleman ;  I  know  what  the  h atmosphere  is,  I  do  ;  and  I 
knows  a  cloud  when  I  sees  it,  damned  if  I  don't !"  On  the 
other  hand,  in  some  fifty  thousand  natives  holiday-making  that 
day,  many  of  them  Christians  and  low-caste  men,  with  no  preju- 
dice against  drink,  a  drunken  man  was  not  to  be  seen. 

It  is  impossible  to  over-estimate  the  harm  done  to  the  En- 
glish name  in  India  by  the  conduct  of  drunken  soldiers  and 
"  European  loafers."  The  latter  class  consists  chiefly  of  dis- 
charged railway  guards  and  runaway  sailors  from  Calcutta — ■ 
men  who,  travelling  across  India  and  living  at  free-quarters 


518  Greater  Britain. 

on  the  trembling  natives,  become  ruffianly  beyond  description 
from  the  effect  upon  their  originally  brutal  natures  of  the  pos- 
session of  unusual  power. 

The  popularity  of  Mohammedan  festivals  such  as  that  of 
the  Mohurrum  has  been  one  of  the  many  causes  which  has 
led  us  to  believe  that  the  Mohammedans  form  a  consider- 
able proportion  of  the  population  of  Hindostan,  but  the  cen- 
sus in  the  North- west  Provinces  revealed  the  fact  that  they 
had  there  been  popularly  set  down  as  three  times  as  nu- 
merous as  they  are,  and  it  is  probable  that  the  same  is  the 
case  throughout  all  India.  Not  only  are  the  Indian  Moham- 
medans few,  but  their  Mohammedanism  sits  lightly  on  them  : 
they  are  Hindoos  in  caste  distinctions,  in  ceremonies,  in  daily 
life,  and  all  but  Hindoos  in  their  actual  worship.  On  the 
other  hand,  this  Mohurrum  showed  me  that  the  Hindoos  do 
not  scruple  to  attend  the  commemoration  of  Hassan  and 
Hoosein.  At  Benares  there  is  a  temple  which  is  used  in 
common  by  Mohammedans  and  Hindoos,  and  throughout 
India,  among  the  low-caste  people,  there  is  now  little  dis- 
tinction between  the  religions.  The  descendants  of  the  Mo- 
hammedan conquerors,  who  form  the  leading  families  in  sev- 
eral native  States,  and  also  in  Oude  itself,  are  among  the  most 
dangerous  of  our  Indian  subjects,  but  they  appear  to  have  but 
little  hold  upon  the  humble  classes  of  their  fellow-worshipers, 
and  their  attempts  to  stir  up  their  people  to  active,  measures 
against  the  English  have  always  failed.  On  the  other  hand, 
we  have  hitherto  somewhat  ignored  the  claims  upon  our  con- 
sideration of  the  Indian  Mohammedans  and  still  more  numer- 
ous hill-tribes,  and  permitted  our  Governments  to  act  as  though 
the  Hindoos  and  the  Sikhs  were  the  only  inhabitants  of  Hin- 
dostan. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

ENGLISH     LEARNING. 

The  English  traveller  who  crosses  India  from  Calcutta  to 
Bombay  is  struck  with  the  uncivilized  condition  of  the  land. 
He  has  heard  in  England  of  palaces  and  temples,  of  art  treas- 
ures and  of  native  poetry,  of  the  grace  of  the  Hindoo  maidens, 
of   Cashmere  shawls,  of  the  Taj,  of  the  Pearl  Mosque,  of  a 


English  Learning.  510 

civilization  as  perfect  as  the  European  and  as  old  as  the  Chi- 
nese. When  he  lands  and  surveys  the  people  he  finds  them 
naked  barbarians,  plunged  in  the  densest  ignorance  and  super- 
stition, and  safe  only  from  extermination  because  the  European 
can  not  dwell  permanently  in  the  climate  of  their  land.  The 
stories  we  are  told  at  home  are  in  no  sense  false :  the  Hindoos 
of  all  classes  are  graceful  in  their  carriage ;  their  tombs  and 
mosques  are  of  extraordinary  beauty,  their  art  patterns  the 
despair  of  our  best  craftsman ;  the  native  poetry  is  at  least 
equal  to  our  own,  and  the  Taj  the  noblest  building  in  the 
world.  Every  word  is  true,  but  the  whole  forms  but  a  singu- 
larly small  portion  of  the  truth.  The  religious  legends,  the 
art  patterns,  the  perfect  manner,  and  the  graceful  eye  and  taste 
seem  to  have  descended  to  the  Hindoos  of  to-day  from  a  gen- 
eration whose  general  civilization  they  have  forgotten.  The 
poetry  is  confined  to  a  few  members  of  a  high-caste  race,  and 
is  mainly  an  importation  from  abroad ;  the  architecture  is  that 
of  the  Moslem  conquerors.  Shah  Jehan,  a  Mohammedan  em- 
peror and  a  foreigner,  built  the  Taj ;  Akbar  the  Great,  another 
Turk,  was  the  designer  of  the  Pearl  Mosque ;  and  the  Hin- 
doos can  no  more  be  credited  with  the  architecture  of  their 
early  conquerors  than  they  can  with  the  railways  and  bridges  ■ 
of  their  English  rulers  or  with  the  water-works  of  Bombay 
city.  The  Sikhs  are  chiefly  foreigners ;  but  of  the  purely 
native  races  the  Rajpoots  are  only  fine  barbarians,  the  Ben- 
galees mere  savages,  and  the  tribes  of  Central  India  but  little 
better  than  the  Australian  aborigines  or  the  brutes.  Through- 
out India  there  are  remains  of  an  early  civilization,  but  it  has 
vanished  as  completely  as  it  has  in  Egypt ;  and  the  cave-tem- 
ples stand  as  far  from  the  daily  life  of  Hindostan  as  the  Pyra- 
mids do  from  that  of  Egypt. 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  the  decline  has  been  extremely  rapid 
since  the  day  wrhen  we  arrived  in  India.  Just  as  it  is  almost 
impossible  by  any  exertion  of  the  mind  to  realize  in  Mexico 
the  fact  that  the  present  degraded  Aztecs  arc  the  same  people 
whom  the  Spaniards  found,  only  some  three  hundred  years 
ago,  dwelling  in  splendid  palaces,  and  worshiping  their  un- 
known gods  in  golden  temples  through  the  medium  of  a  sacred 
tongue,  so  now  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  the  pauperized  in- 
habitants of  Orissa  and  the  miserable  peasantry  of  Oude  are 


520  Greater  Britain. 

the  sons  of  the  chivalrous  warriors  who  fought  in  the  last 
century  against  Clive. 

The  truth  is,  that  in  surveying  Oriental  empires  from  a  dis- 
tance we  are  dazzled  by  the  splendor  of  the  kings  and  priests ; 
drawing  near  we  find  an  oppressed  and  miserable  slave-class, 
from  whose  hard  earnings  the  wealth  of  the  great  is  wrung ; 
called  on  to  govern  the  country,  we  extinguish  the  kings  and 
priests  in  the  fashion  in  which  Captain  Ilodson,  in  1857,  shot 
the  last  sons  of  the  imperial  family  of  India  in  a  dry  ditch, 
while  we  were  transporting  the  last  Mogul,  along  with  our  na- 
tive thieves,  in  a  convict  ship  to  British  Bnrmah.  There  re- 
mains the  slave-class,  and  little  else.  We  may  select  a  few  of 
these  to  be  our  ])olicemen  and  torturers-in-chief,  we  may  pick 
another  handful  to  wear  red  coats,  and  be  our  guards  and  the 
executioners  of  their  countrymen  ;  we  may  teach  a  few  to 
chatter  some  Avords  of  English,  and  then,  calling  them  great 
scoundrels,  may  set  them  in  our  railway  stations  and  our  offi- 
ces ;  but  virtually,  in  annexing  any  Eastern  country,  we  destroy 
the  ruling-class,  and  reduce  the  government  to  a  mere  impe- 
rialism, where  one  man  rules  and  the  rest  are  slaves.  No  par- 
allel can  be  drawn  in  Europe  or  North  America  to  that  state 
of  things  which  exists  wherever  we  carry  our  arms  in  the 
East:  were  the  President  and  Congress  in  America,  and  all 
the  wealthy  merchants  of  the  great  towns,  to  be  destroyed  to- 
morrow, the  next  day  would  see  the  Government  proceeding 
quietly  in  the  hands  of  another  set  eveiy  bit  as  intelligent,  as 
wise,  and  good.  In  a  lesser  degree  the  same  would  be  the 
case  in  England  or  in  France.  The  best  example  that  could 
be  given  nearer  home  of  that  which  occurs  continually  in  the 
East  would  be  one  which  should  suppose  that  the  Emperor 
and  nobility  in  Russia  were  suddenly  destroyed,  and  the  coun- 
try left  in  the  hands  of  the  British  embassador  and  the  late 
serfs.  Even  this  example  would  fail  to  convey  a  notion  of  the 
extent  of  the  revolution  which  takes  place  on  the  conquest  by 
Britain  of  an  Eastern  country ;  for  in  the  East  the  nobles  are 
better  taught  and  the  people  more  ignorant  than  they  are  in 
Russia,  and  the  change  causes  a  more  complete  destruction  of 
poetry,  of  literature,  and  of  art. 

It  being  admitted,  then,  that  we  are  in  the  position  of  hav- 
ing in  Hindostan  a  numerous  and  ignorant,  but  democratic 


English  Learning.  521 

people  to  govern  from  without,  there  comes  the  question  of 
what  should  be  the  general  character  of  our  government. 
The  immediate  questions  of  the  day  may  be  left  to  our  subor- 
dinates in  India;  but  the  direction  and  the  tendencies  of  legis- 
lation are  matters  for  us  at  home.  There  can  be  nothing 
more  ridiculous  than  the  position  of  those  of  our  civilians  in 
India  who,  while  they  treat  the  natives  with  profound  con- 
tempt, are  continually  crying  out  against  government  from  at 
home,  on  the  ground  set  forth  in  the  shibboleth  of  "  India  for 
the  Indians."  If  India  is  to  be  governed  by  the  British  race 
at  all  it  must  be  governed  from  Great  Britain.  The  general 
conditions  of  our  rule  must  be  dictated  at  London  by  the 
English  people,  and  nothing  but  the  execution  of  our  decrees, 
the  collection  of  evidence,  and  the  framing  of  mere  rules,  left 
to  our  subordinates  in  the  East. 

First  among  the  reforms  that  must  be  introduced  from  Lon- 
don is  the  general  instruction  in  the  English  language  of  the 
native  population.  Except  upon  a  theory  that  will  fairly  admit 
of  the  forcing  upon  a  not  unwilling  people  of  this  first  of  all 
great  means  of  civilization,  our  presence  in  India  is  wholly  in- 
defensible. Unless  also  that  be  done,  our  presence  in  India, 
or  that  of  some  nation  stronger  than  us  and  not  more  scru- 
pulous, must  endure  forever,  for  it  is  plainly  impossible  that  a 
native  government  capable  of  holding  its  own  against  Russia 
and  America  can  otherwise  be  built  up  in  Hindostan.  Upon 
the  contrary  supposition — namely,  that  we  do  not  intend  at 
any  time  to  quit  our  hold  on  India — the  instruction  of  the 
people  in  our  language  becomes  still  more  important.  Upon 
the  second  theory  we  must  teach  them  English,  the  language 
of  the  British  Government ;  upon  the  first,  English,  the  lan- 
guage of  the  world.  Upon  either  theory  we  must  teach  them 
English.  Nothing  can  better  show  the  trivial  character  of 
the  much-talked-of  reforms  introduced  into  India  in  the  last 
few  years,  since  our  queen  has  assumed  the  imperial  throne 
of  Hindostan,  than  the  fact  that  no  progress  whatever  has 
been  made  in  a  matter  of  far  more  grave  importance  than  are 
any  number  of  miles  of  railway,  canal,  or  Grand  Trunk  roads. 
Our  civilians  in  India  tell  us  that  if  you  teach  the  natives  En- 
glish you  expose  them  to  the  attacks  of  Christian  missionaries, 
and  us  to  revolt — an  exposure  which  speaks  not  too  highly  of 


522  Greater  Britain. 

the  Government  which  is  forced  to  make  it.  Our  military 
officers,  naturally  hating  the  country  to  which  they  now  are 
exiled,  instead  of  being  sent  as  formerly  of  their  own  free-will, 
tell  you  that  every  native  who  can  speak  English  is  a  scoundrel, 
a  liar,  and  a  thief,  which  is,  perhaps,  if  we  except  the  Parsees, 
not  far  from  true  at  present,  when  teaching  is  given  only  to  a 
few  lads,  who  thus  acquire  a  monopoly  of  the  offices  in  which 
money  passes  through  native  hands.  Their  opinion  has  no 
bearing  whatever  upon  a  general  instruction  of  the  people,  un- 
der which  we  should  evidently  be  able  to  pick  our  men,  as  we 
now  pick  them  for  all  employments  in  which  a  knowledge  of 
English  is  not  required. 

A  mere  handful  of  Spaniards  succeeded  in  naturalizing 
their  language  in  a  country  twice  as  large  as  Europe :  in  the 
whole  of  South  America,  the  Central  States,  and  Mexico. 
Not  only  there,  but  in  the  United  States,  the  Utes  and  Co- 
manches,  wild  as  they  are,  speak  Spanish,  while  their  own  lan- 
guage is  forgotten.  In  the  west  of  Mexico  there  is  no  trace  of 
pure  Spanish  blood,  there  is  even  comparatively  little  mixture 
— yet  Spanish,  and  that  of  the  best,  is  spoken,  to  the  exclusion 
of  every  other  language  in  Manzanillo  and  Acapulco.  This 
phenomenon  is  not  confined  to  the  Western  world.  In  Bom- 
bay Presidency  five  millions  of  so-called  Portuguese — who, 
however,  for  the  most  part  are  pure  Hindoos — speak  a  Latin 
tongue,  and  worship  at  the  temples  of  the  Christian  God. 
French  makes  progress  in  Saigon,  Dutch  in  Java.  In  Canada 
Ave  find  the  Huron  Indians  French  in  language  and  religion, 
English  alone,  it  would  seem,  can  not  be  pressed  upon  any  of 
the  dark-skinned  tribes.  In  New  Zealand  the  Maories  know 
no  English  ;  in  Natal,  the  Zulus  ;  in  India,  the  Hindoos.  The 
Dutch,  finally  expelled  from  South  Africa  in  1815  and  from 
Ceylon  1802,  have  yet  more  hold  by  their  tongue  upon  the 
natives  of  those  lands  than  have  the  English  —  masters  of 
them  since  the  Dutch  expulsion. 

To  the  early  abolition  or  total  non-existence  of  slavery  in 
the  British  colonies  we  may,  perhaps,  trace  our  unfortunate 
failure  to  spread  our  mother  -  tongue.  Dutch,  Portuguese, 
Spaniards,  all  practiced  a  slavery  of  the  widest  kind ;  all  had 
about  them  not  native  servants,  frequently  changing  from  the 
old  master  to  the  new,  and  passing  unheeded  to  whatever 


English  Learning.  523 

service  money  could  tempt  them  to  engage  in,  but  domestic 
slaves,  bred  up  in  the  family,  and  destined,  probably,  to  die 
within  the  house  where  they  were  reared,  to  whom  the  lan- 
guage of  the  master  was  taught,  because  your  Spanish  gran- 
dee, with  power  of  life  and  death  over  his  family  slaves,  was 
not  the  man  to  condescend  to  learn  his  servants'  tongue  in  or- 
der that  his  commands  should  be  more  readily  understood. 
Another  reason  may  have  caused  the  Portuguese  and  other 
dominant  races  of  the  later  Middle  Ages  to  have  insisted  that 
their  slaves  should  learn  the  language  of  the  master  and  the 
Government;  namely,  that  in  learning  the  new  the  servile 
families  would  speedily  forget  the  older  tongue,  and  thus  be- 
come as  incapable  of  mixing  in  the  conspiracies  and  insurrec- 
tions of  their  brother  natives  as  Pyrenean  shepherd-dogs  of  con- 
sorting with  their  progenitors,  the  wolves.  Whatever  their 
reasons,  however,  the  Spaniards  succeeded  where  we  have 
failed. 

The  greatest  of  our  difficulties  are  the  financial.  No  cheap 
system  is  workable  by  us,  and  our  dear  system  we  have  not 
the  means  to  work.  The  success  of  our  rule  immediately  de- 
pends upon  the  purity  and  good  feeling  of  the  rulers,  yet 
there  are  villages  in  British  India  where  the  people  have 
never  seen  a  white  man,  and  off  the  main  roads,  and  outside 
the  district  towns,  the  sight  of  a  European  official  is  ex- 
tremely rare.  To  the  inhabitants  of  the  greater  portion  of 
rural  India  the  governor  who  symbolizes  British  rule  is  a 
cruel  and  corrupt  Hindoo  policeman  :  himself  not  improbably 
a  Bengal  mutineer  m  1857,  or  drawn  from  the  classes  whom 
our  most  ignorant  Sepoys  themselves  despised.  It  is  not 
easy  to  see  how  this  vital  defect  can  be  amended,  except  by 
the  slow  process  of  raising  up  a  native  population  that  we  can 
trust  and  put  in  office,  and  this  is  impossible  unless  we  en- 
courage and  reward  the  study  of  the  English  tongue.  The 
most  needed  of  all  social  reforms  in  India,  an  improvement  in 
the  present  thoroughly  servile  condition  of  the  native  women, 
could  itself  in  no  way  be  more  easily  brought  about  than  by 
the  familiarization  of  the  Hindoos  with  English  literature ; 
and  that  greatest  of  all  the  curses  of  India,  false-swearing  in 
the  courts,  would  undoubtedly  be  both  directly  and  indirectly 
checked  by  the  introduction  of  our  language.     The  spread  of 


524  Greater  Britain. 

the  English  tongue  need  be  no  check  to  that  of  the  ancient 
classical  languages  of  the  East:  the  two  studies  would  go 
hand  in  hand.  It  is  already  a  disgrace  to  us  that  while  we 
spend  annually  in  India  a  large  sum  upon  our  chaplains  and 
church  schools,  we  toss  only  one-hundredth  part  of  the  sum — 
a  paltry  few  thousands  of  rupees — to  the  native  colleges,  where 
the  most  venerable  of  languages — Sanscrit,  Arabic,  and  Per- 
sian— are  taught  by  the  men  who  alone  can  thoroughly  under- 
stand them.  At  the  moment  when  England,  Germany,  and 
America  are  struggling  for  the  palm  in  the  teaching  of  Ori- 
ental literature  —  when  Oxford,  Edinburgh,  and  London  are 
contending  with  each  other,  and  with  Berlin,  Yale,  and  Har- 
vard, in  translating  and  explaining  Eastern  books — our  Gov- 
ernment in  India  is  refusing  the  customary  help  to  the  publi- 
cation of  Sanscrit  works,  and  starving  the  teachers  of  the  lan- 
guage. 

So  long  as  the  natives  remain  ignorant  of  the  English 
tongue  they  remain  ignorant  of  all  the  civilization  of  our  time 
— ignorant  alike  of  political  and  physical  science,  of  philoso- 
phy and  true  learning.  It  is  needless  to  say  that,  if  French 
or  German  were  taught  them  instead  of  English,  they  would 
be  as  well  off  in  this  respect ;  but  English,  as  the  tongue  of 
the  ruling  race,  has  the  vast  advantage  that  its  acquisition  by 
the  Hindoos  will  soon  place  the  Government  of  India  in  na- 
tive hands,  and  thus,  gradually  relieving  us  of  an  almost  in- 
tolerable burden,  will  civilize  and  set  free  the  people  of  Hin- 
dostan. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

INDIA. 

"  All  general  observations  upon  India  are  necessarily  ab- 
surd," said  to  me  at  Simla  a  distinguished  officer  of  the  vice- 
roy's Government;  but  although  this  is  true  enough  of  theo- 
ries that  bear  upon  the  customs,  social  or  religious,  of  the 
forty  or  fifty  peoples  which  make  up  what  in  England  we 
style  the  "  Hindoo  race,"  it  has  no  bearing  on  the  considera- 
tion of  the  policy  which  should  guide  our  actual  administra- 
tion of  the  empire. 


India.  52o 

England  in  the  East  is  not  the  England  that  we  know. 
Flousy  Britannia,  Avith  her  anchor  and  ship,  becomes  a  mys- 
terious Oriental  despotism,  ruling  a  sixth  of  the  human  race, 
nominally  for  the  natives'  own  good,  and  certainly  for  no  one 
else's,  by  laws  and  in  a  manner  opposed  to  every  tradition 
and  every  prejudice  of  the  whole  of  the  various  tribes  of 
which  this  vast  population  is  composed — scheming,  annexing, 
out-manoeuvring  Russia,  and  sometimes,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
out-lying  Persia  herself. 

In  our  island  home  we  plume  ourselves  upon  our  hatred  of 
political  extraditions :  we  would  scorn  to  ask  the  surrender 
of  a  political  criminal  of  our  own,  we  would  die  in  the  last 
ditch  sooner  than  surrender  those  of  another  crown.  What'  a 
contrast  we  find  to  this  when  we  look  at  our  conduct  in  the 
East.  During  the  mutiny  of  1857  some  of  our  rebel  subjects 
escaped  into  the  Portuguese  territory  at  Goa.  We  demanded 
their  extradition,  which  the  Portuguese  refused.  "VVe  insist- 
ed. The  offer  we  finally  accepted  was,  that  they  should  be 
transported  to  the  Portuguese  settlement  at  Timor,  we  sup 
plying  transports.  An  Indian  transport  conveying  these  men 
to  their  island  grave,  but  carrying  the  British  flag,  touched  at 
Batavia  in  1858,  to  the  astonishment  of  the  honest  Dutchmen, 
who  knew  England  as  a  defender  of  national  liberty  in  Eu- 
rope. 

Although  despotic,  our  government  of  India  is  not  bad  ; 
indeed,  the  hardest  thing  that  can  be  said  of  it  is  that  it  is 
too  good.  We  do  our  duty  by  the  natives  manfully,  but 
they  care  little  about  that,  and  we  are  continually  hurting 
their  prejudices  and  offending  them  in  small  things,  to  which 
they  attach  more  importance  than  they  do  to  great.  To  con- 
ciliate the  Hindoos  we  should  spend  £10,000  a  year  in  sup- 
port of  native  literature  to  please  the  learned,  and  £10,000 
on  fire-works  to  delight  the  wealthy  and  the  low-caste  people. 
Instead  of  this,  we  worry  them  with  municipal  institutions  and 
benevolent  inventions  that  they  can  not  and  will  not  under- 
stand. The  attempt  to  introduce  trial  by  jury  into  certain 
parts  of  India  was  laudable,  but  it  has  ended  in  one  of  those 
failures  which  discredit  the  Government  in  the  eyes  of  its 
own  subordinates.  If  there  is  a  European  foreman  of  jury, 
the  natives  salaam  to  him,  and  ask  :  "  What  does  the  sahib 


526  Greater  Britain. 

say?"  If  not,  they  look  across  the  court  to  the  native  bar- 
risters, who  hold  up  fingers,  each  of  which  means  100  rs.,  and 
thus  bid  against  each  other  for  the  verdict ;  for  while  natives 
as  a  rule  are  honest  in  their  personal  or  individual  dealings, 
yet  in  places  of  trust — railway  clerkships,  secretaryships  of 
departments,  and  so  on — they  are  almost  invariably  willing 
to  take  bribes. 

Throughout  India  such  trials  as  are  not  before  a  jury  are 
conducted  with  the  aid  of  native  assessors  as  members  of  the 
court.  This  works  almost  as  badly  as  the  jury  does,  the  judge 
giving  his  decision  without  any  reference  to  the  opinion  of 
the  assessors.  The  story  runs  that  the  only  use  of  assessors 
is,  that  in  an  appeal — where  the  judge  and  assessors  had 
agreed — the  advocate  can  say  that  the  judge  "  has  abdicated 
his  functions,  and  yielded  to  the  absurd  opinion  of  a  couple  of 
ignorant  and  dishonest  natives  " — or,  if  the  judge  had  gone 
against  his  client  in  spite  of  the  assessors  being  inclined  the 
other  way,  that  the  judge  "  has  decided  in  the  teeth  of  all  ex- 
perienced and  impartial  native  opinion,  as  declared  by  the 
voices  of  two  honest  and  intelligent  assessors." 

Our  introduction  of  juries  is  not  an  isolated  instance  of 
our  somewhat  blind  love  for  "  progress."  If  in  the  already- 
published  portions  of  the  civil  code — for  instance,  the  parts 
which  relate  to  succession,  testamentary  and  intestate — you 
read  in  the  illustrations  York  for  Delhi,  and  Pimlico  for  Sul- 
tanpore,  there  is  not  a  word  to  show  that  the  code  is  meant 
for  India,  or  for  an  Oriental  race  at  all.  It  is  true  that  the 
testamentary  portion  of  the  code  applies  at  present  only  to 
European  residents  in  India;  but  the  advisability  of  extending 
it  to  natives  is  under  consideration,  and  this  extension  is  only 
a  matter  of  time.  The  result  of  over-great  rapidity  of  legisla- 
tion, and  of  unyielding  adherence  to  English  or  Roman  mod- 
els in  the  Indian  codes,  must  be  that  our  laws  will  never  have 
the  slightest  hold  upon  the  people,  and  that  if  we  are  swept 
from  India  our  laws  "will  vanish  with  us.  The  Western  char- 
acter of  our  codes,  and  their  want  of  elasticity  and  of  adapta- 
bility to  Eastern  conditions,  is  one  among  the  many  causes  of 
our  unpopularity. 

The  old-school  Hindoos  fear  that  we  aim  at  subverting  all 
their  dearest  and  most  venerable  institutions,  and  the  free- 


India.  527 

thinkers  of  Calcutta  and  the  educated  natives  hate  us  because, 
while  we  preach  culture  and  progress,  we  give  them  no  chance 
of  any  but  a  subordinate  career.  The  discontent  of  the  first- 
named  class  we  can  gradually  allay  by  showing  them  the 
groundlessness  of  their  suspicions,  but  the  shrewd  Bengalee 
baboos  are  more  difficult  to  deal  with,  and  can  be  met  only  in 
one  way — namely,  by  the  employment  of  the  natives  in  offices 
of  high  trust,  under  the  security  afforded  by  the  infliction  of 
the  most  degrading  penalties  on  proof  of  the  smallest  corrup- 
tion. One  of  the  points  in  which  the  policy  of  Akbar  surpass- 
ed our  own  was  in  the  association  of  qualified  Hindoos  with 
his  Mohammedan  fellow-countrymen  in  high  places  in  his 
government.  The  fact,  moreover,  that  native  governments 
are  still  preferred  to  British  rule  is  a  strong  argument  in  favor 
of  the  employment  by  us  of  natives  ;  for,  roughly  speaking, 
their  governmental  system  differs  from  ours  only  in  the  em- 
ployment of  native  officers  instead  of  English.  There  is  not 
now  existent  a  thoroughly  native  government ;  at  some  time  or 
other  we  have  controlled  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  the  govern- 
ments of  all  the  native  States.  To  study  purely  native  rule 
Ave  should  have  to  visit  Cabool  or  Herat,  and  watch  the  Af- 
ghan princes  putting  out  each  other's  eyes,  while  their  people 
are  engaged  in  never-ending  Avars  or  in  murdering  strangers 
in  the  name  of  God. 

Natives  might  more  safely  be  employed  to  fill  the  higher 
than  the  lower  offices.  It  is  more  easy  to  find  honest  and 
competent  native  governors  or  councilmen  than  honest  and 
efficient  native  clerks  and  policemen.  Moreover,  natives  haA'e 
more  temptations  to  be  corrupt,  and  more  facilities  for  being 
so  with  safety,  in  low  positions  than  in  high.  A  native  police- 
man or  telegraph  official  can  take  his  bribe  Avithout  fear  of  de- 
tection by  his  European  chief  :  not  so  a  native  governor,  with 
European  subordinates  about  him. 

The  common  Anglo-Indian  objections  to  the  employment 
of  natives  in  our  service  are,  Avhen  examined,  found  to  apply 
only  to  the  employment  of  incompetent  natives.  To  say  that 
the  native  lads  of  Bengal,  educated  in  our  Calcutta  colleges, 
are  half  educated  and  grossly  immoral,  is  to  say  that,  under  a 
proper  system  of  selection  of  officers,  they  could  never  come 
to  be  employed.     All  that  is  necessary  at  the  moment  is  that 


528  Greater  Britain. 

we  should  concede  the  principle  by  appointing,  year  by  year, 
more  natives  to  high  posts,  and  that,  by  holding  the  civil  ser- 
vice examinations  in  India  as  well  as  in  England,  and  by  es- 
tablishing throughout  India  well-regulated  schools,  we  should 
place  the  competent  native  youths  upon  an  equal  footing  with 
the  English. 

That  we  shall  ever  come  to  be  thoroughly  popular  in  India 
is  not  to  be  expected.  By  the  time  the  old  ruling  families 
have  died  out  or  completely  lost  their  power  the  people  whom 
we  rescued  from  their  oppression  will  have  forgotten  that  the 
oppression  ever  existed,  and  as  long  as  the  old  families  last  they 
will  hate  us  steadily.  One  of  the  documents  published  in  the 
Gazette  of  India  while  I  was  at  Simla  was  from  the  pen  of  As- 
udulla  Muhamadi,  one  of  the  best  known  Mohammedans  of  the 
North-west  Provinces.  His  grievances  were  the  cessation  of 
the  practice  of  granting  annuities  to  the  "  sheiks  of  noble  fam- 
ilies;" the  conferring  of  the  "high  offices  of  Mufti,  Sudr'- 
Amcen,  and  Tahsildar  "  on  persons  not  of  "  noble  extraction ;" 
"  the  education  of  the  children  of  the  higher  and  lower  classes  on 
the  same  footing,  without  distinction ;"  "  the  desire  that  wom- 
en should  be  treated  like  men  in  every  respect,"  and  "  the  forma- 
tion of  English  schools  for  the  education  of  girls  of  the  lower 
order."  He  ended  his  State  paper  by  pointing  out  the  ill  effects 
of  the  practice  of  conferring  on  the  poor  "  respectable  berths, 
thereby  enabling  them  to  indulge  in  luxuries  which  their  fathers 
never  dreamt  of  and  to  play  the  upstart  j"  and  declared  that  to 
a  time-honored  system  of  class  government  there  had  succeeded 
"  a  state  of  things  which  I  can  not  find  words  to  express."  It 
is  not  likely  that  our  rule  will  ever  have  much  hold  on  the  class 
that  Asudulla  represents,  for  not  only  is  our  government  in  In- 
dia a  despotism,  but  its  tendency  is  to  become  an  imperialism, 
or  despotism  exercised  over  a  democratic  people,  such  as  we 
see  in  France,  and  are  commencing  to  see  in  Iiussia. 

We  are  levelling  all  ranks  in  India ;  we  are  raising  the 
humblest  men,  if  they  will  pass  certain  examinations,  to  posts 
which  Ave  refuse  to  the  most  exalted  of  nobles  unless  they  can 
pass  higher.  A  clever  son  of  a  bheestie  or  sweeper,  if  he  will 
learn  English,  not  only  may,  but  must  rise  to  be  a  railway  ba- 
boo or  deputy-collector  of  customs ;  whereas  for  Hindoo  ra- 
jahs or  Mohammedan   nobles  of  Delhi  creation  there  is  no 


India.  529 

chance  of  any  tiling  but  gradual  decline  of  fortune.  Even  our 
Star  of  India  is  democratic  in  its  working:  wc  refuse  it  to 
men  of  the  highest  descent  to  confer  it  on  self-made  viziers 
of  native  States,  or  others  who  were  shrewd  enough  to  take 
our  side  during  the  rebellion.  All  this  is  very  modern,  and 
full  of  " progress," no  doubt;  but  it  is  progress  toward  impe- 
rialism, or  equality  of  conditions  under  paternal  despotism. 

Not  only  does  the  democratic  character  of  our  rule  set  the 
old  families  against  us,  but  it  leads  also  to  the  failure  of  our 
attempt  to  call  around  us  a  middle-class,  an  educated  thinking 
body  of  natives  with  something  to  lose,  who,  seeing  that  Ave 
arc  ruling  India  for  her  own  good,  would  support  us  heart  and 
soul,  and  form  the  best  of  bucklers  for  our  dominion.  As  it 
is,  the  attempt  has  long  been  made  in  name,  but,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  avc  have  humbled  the  upper-class,  and  failed  to  raise  a 
middle-class  to  take  its  place.  We  have  crushed  the  prince 
without  setting  up  the  trader  in  his  stead. 

The  wide-spread  hatred  of  the  English  does  not  prove  that 
they  are  bad  rulers ;  it  is  merely  the  hatred  that  Easterns  al- 
ways bear  their  masters ;  yet  masters  the  Hindoos  will  have. 
Even  the  enlightened  natives  do  not  look  with  longing  toward  a 
future  of  self-government,  however  distant.  Most  intelligent 
Hindoos  would  like  to  see  the  Russians  drive  us  out  of  India, 
not  that  any  of  them  think  the  Russians  would  be  better  rulers 
or  kinder  men,  but  merely  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  their 
traditional  oppressors  beaten.  What,  then,  are  we  to  do? 
The  only  justification  for  our  presence  in  India  is  the  education 
for  freedom  of  the  Indian  races ;  but  at  this  moment  they  will 
not  have  freedom  as  a  gift,  and  many  Indian  statesmen  declare 
that  no  amount  of  education  will  ever  fit  them  for  it.  For  a 
score  of  centuries  the  Hindoos  have  bribed  and  taken  bribes, 
and  corruption  has  eaten  into  the  national  character  so  deeply 
that  those  who  are  the  best  of  judges  declare  that  it  can  never 
be  washed  out.  The  analogy  of  the  rise  of  other  races  leads 
us  to  hope,  however,  that  the  lapse  of  time  will  be  sufficient  to 
raise  the  Hindoos  as  it  has  raised  the  Huns. 

The  ancients  believed  that  the  neighborhood  of  frost  and 
snow  was  fatal  to  philosophy  and  to  the  arts  ;  to  the  Cartha- 
ginians, Egyptians,  and  Phoenicians  the  inhabitants  of  Gaul, 
of  Germain-,  and  of  Britain  were  rude  barbarians  of  the  frozen 


530  Greater  Britain. 

North,  that  no  conceivable  lapse  of  time  could  convert  into 
any  thing  much  better  than  talking  bears — a  piece  of  empiri- 
cism which  has  a  close  resemblance  to  our  view  of  India.  It 
is  idle  to  point  to  the  tropics  and  say  that  free  communities 
do  not  exist  "within  those  limits :  the  map  of  the  world  will 
show  that  freedom  exists  only  in  the  homes  of  the  English 
race.  France,  the  authoress  of  modern  liberty,  has  failed  as 
yet  to  learn  how  to  retain  the  boon  for  which  she  is  ever  ready 
to  shed  her  blood ;  Switzerland,  a  so-called  free  State,  is  the 
home  of  the  worst  of  bigotry  and  intolerance  ;  the  Spanish  re- 
publics are  notoriously  despotisms  under  democratic  titles ; 
America,  Australia,  Britain,  the  homes  of  our  race,  are  as  yet 
the  only  dwelling-spots  of  freedom. 

There  is  much  exaggeration  in  the  cry  that  self -government, 
personal  independence,  and  true  manliness  can  exist  only  where 
the  snow  will  lie  upon  the  ground,  that  cringing  slavishness 
and  imbecile  submission  follow  the  palm-belt  round  the  world. 
If  freedom  be  good  in  one  country  it  is  good  in  all,  for  there  is 
nothing  in  its  essence  which  should  limit  it  in  time  or  place : 
the  only  question  that  is  open  for  debate  is  whether  freedom 
— an  admitted  good — is  a  benefit  which,  if  once  conferred  upon 
the  inhabitants  of  the  tropics,  will  be  maintained  by  them 
against  invasion  from  abroad  and  rebellion  from  within ;  if  it 
be  given  bit  by  bit,  each  step  being  taken  only  when  public 
opinion  is  fully  prepared  for  its  acceptance,  there  can  be  no 
fear  that  freedom  will  ever  be  resigned  without  a  struggle. 
We  should  know  that  Sikhs,  Kandians,  Scindians,  Marattas 
have  fought  bravely  enough  for  national  independence  to  make 
it  plain  that  they  will  struggle  to  the  death  for  liberty  as  soon 
as  they  can  be  made  to  see  its  worth.  It  will  take  years  to 
efface  the  stain  of  a  couple  of  hundred  years  of  slavery  in  the 
negroes  of  America,  and  it  may  take  scores  of  years  to  heal 
the  deeper  sores  of  Hindostan  ;  but  history  teaches  us  to  be- 
lieve that  the  time  will  come  when  the  Indians  will  be  fit  for 
freedom. 

Whether  the  future  advent  of  a  better  day  for  India  be  a 
fact  or  a  dream,  our  presence  in  the  country  is  justifiable. 
Were  we  to  quit  India  we  must  leave  her  to  Russia  or  to  her- 
self. If  to  Russia,  the  political  shrewdness  and  commercial 
blindness  of  the  Northern  Power  would  combine  to  make  our 


India.  531 

pocket  suffer  by  loss  of  money  as  much  as  would  our  dignity 
by  so  plain  a  confession  of  our  impotence;  while  the  unhappy 
Indians  would  discover  that  there  exists  a  European  nation 
capable  of  surpassing  Eastern  tyrants  in  corruption  by  as 
much  as  it  already  exceeds  them  in  dull  weight  of  leaden 
cruelty  and  oppression.  If  to  herself,  unextinguishable  anar- 
chy would  involve  our  Eastern  trade  and  India's  happiness  in 
a  hideous  and  lasting  ruin. 

If  we  are  to  keep  the  country  we  must  consider  gravely 
whether  it  be  possible  properly  to  administer  its  affairs  upon 
the  present  system — whether,  for  instance,  the  best  supreme 
government  for  an  Eastern  empire  be  a  body  composed  of  a 
chief  invariably  removed  from  office  just  as  he  begins  to  un- 
derstand his  duty,  and  a  council  of  worn-out  Indian  officers, 
the  whole  being  placed  In  the  remotest  corner  of  Western 
Europe,  for  the  sake  of  removing  the  government  from  the 
"pernicious  influence  of  local  prejudice." 

India  is  at  this  moment  governed  by 'the  Indian  Council  at 
Westminster,  who  are  responsible  to  nobody.  The  Secretary 
of  State  is  responsible  to  Parliament  for  a  policy  he  can  not 
control,  and  the  viceroy  is  a  head-clerk. 

India  can  be  governed  in  two  ways  ;  either  in  India  or  in 
London.  Under  the  former  plan  we  should  leave  the  bureau- 
cracy in  India  independent,  preserving  merely  some  slight  con- 
trol at  home — a  control  which  should,  of  course,  be  purely 
parliamentary  and  English ;  under  the  other  plan — which  is 
that  to  which  it  is  to  be  hoped  the  people  of  England  will 
command  their  representatives  to  adhere  —  India  would  be 
governed  from  London  by  the  English  nation,  in  the  interests 
of  humanity  and  civilization.  Under  either  system  the  Indian 
Council  in  London  would  be  valuable  as  an  advising  body; 
but  it  does  not  follow,  because  the  Council  can  advise,  that 
therefore  they  can  govern,  and  to  delegate  executive  power  to 
such  a  board  is  on  the  face  of  it  absurd. 

Whatever  the  powers  to  be  granted  to  the  Indian  Council, 
it  is  clear  that  the  members  should  hold  office  for  the  space  of 
only  a  few  years.  So  rapid  is  the  change  that  is  now  making 
a  nation  out  of  what  was  ten  years  ago  but  a  continent  in- 
habited by  an  agglomeration  of  distinct  tribes,  that  no  Anglo- 
Indian  who  has  left  India  for  ten  years  is  competent  even  to 


5o2  Greater  Britain. 

advise  the  rulers,  much  less  himself  to  share  in  the  ruling,  of 
Hindostan.  The  objection  to  the  government  of  India  by  the 
Secretary  of  State  is,  that  the  tenant  of  the  office  changes  fre- 
quently, and  is  generally  ignorant  of  native  feelings  and  of 
Indian  affairs.  The  difficulty,  however,  which  attends  the  in- 
troduction of  a  successful  plan  for  the  government  of  India 
from  London  is  far  from  being  irremovable,  while  the  objection 
to  the  paternal  government  of  India  by  a  viceroy  is  Jhat  it 
would  be  wholly  opposed  to  our  constitutional  theories,  unfit- 
ted to  introduce  into  our  Indian  system  those  democratic 
principles  which  we  have  for  ten  years  been  striving  to  im- 
plant, and  even  in  the  long  run  dangerous  to  our  liberties  at 
home. 

One  reason  why  the  Indian  officials  cry  out  against  govern- 
ment from  St.  James's  Park  is,  because  they  deprecate  inter- 
ference with  the  viceroy ;  but  were  the  Council  abolished,  ex- 
cept as  a  consultative  body,  and  the  Indian  Secretaryship  of 
State  made  a  permanent  appointment,  it  is  probable  that  the 
viceroy  would  be  relieved  from  that  continual  and  minute  in- 
terference with  his  acts  which  at  present  degrades  his  office  in 
native  eyes.  The  viceroy  would  be  left  considerable  power, 
and  certainly  greater  power  than  he  has  at  present,  by  the 
Secretary  of  State  ;  that  which  is  essential  is  merely  that  the 
power  of  control,  and  responsible  control,  should  lie  in  London. 
The  viceroy  would  in  practice  exercise  the  executive  functions, 
under  the  control  of  a  Secretary  of  State,  advised  by  an  expe- 
rienced Council  and  responsible  to  Parliament,  and  we  should 
possess  a  system  under  which  there  would  be  that  conjunction 
of  personal  responsibility  and  of  skilled  advice  which  is  abso- 
lutely required  for  the  good  govei'nment  of  India. 

To  a  scheme  which  involves  the  government  of  India  from 
at  home  it  may  be  objected,  that  India  can  not  be  so  well  un- 
derstood in  London  as  in  Calcutta.  So  far  from  this  being 
the  case,  there  is  but  little  doubt  among  those  who  best  know 
the  India  of  to-day  that  while  men  in  Calcutta  understand 
the  wants  of  the  Bengalee,  and  men  in  Lahore  the  feelings  of 
the  Sikh,  India,  as  a  whole,  is  far  better  understood  in  England 
than  in  any  Presidency  town. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  with  India  within  a  day  of 
England  by  telegraph,  and  within  three  weeks  by  steam,  the 


India.  533 

old  autocratic  Governor-general  has  become  impossible,  and 
day  by  day  the  Secretary  of  State  in  London  must  become 
more  and  more  the  ruler  of  India.  "Were  the  Secretary  of 
State  appointed  for  a  term  of  years,  and  made  irremovable  ex- 
cept by  a  direct  vote  of  the  House  of  Commons,  no  fault 
could  be  found  with  the  results  of  the  inevitable  change :  as 
it  is,  however,  a  council  of  advice  will  hardly  be  sufficient  to 
prevent  gross  blundering  while  we  allow  India  to  be  ruled 
by  no  less  than  four  Secretaries  of  State  in  a  single  year. 

The  chief  considerations  to  be  kept  in  view  in  the  framing 
of  a  system  of  government  for  India  are  briefly  these :  a  suf- 
ficient separation  of  the  two  countries  to  prevent  the  clashing 
of  the  democratic  and  paternal  systems,  but,  at  the  same  time, 
a  control  over  the  Indian  administration  by  the  English  peo- 
ple active  enough  to  insure  the  progressive  amelioration  of 
the  former ;  the  minor  points  to  be  borne  in  mind  are  that  in 
India  we  need  less  centralization,  in  London  more  permanence, 
and  in  both  increased  personal  responsibility.  All  these  re- 
quirements are  satisfied  by  the  plan  proposed,  if  it  be  coupled 
with  the  separation  of  the  English  and  Indian  armies,  the  em- 
ployment of  natives  in  our  service,  and  the  creation  of  new 
governments  for  the  Indus  territories  and  Assam.  Madras, 
Bombay,  Bengal,  Assam,  the  Central  Provinces,  Agra,  the  In- 
dus, Oude,  and  Burmah  would  form  the  nine  Presidencies,  the 
viceroy  having  the  supreme  control  over  our  officers  in  the 
native  States,  and  not  only  should  the  governors  of  the  last 
seven  be  placed  upon  the  same  footing  with  those  of  Mad- 
ras and  Bombay,  but  all  the  local  governors  should  be  assisted 
by  a  council  of  ministers  who  should  necessarily  be  consulted, 
but  whose  advice  should  not  be  binding  on  the  governors. 
The  objections  that  are  raised  against  councils  do  not  apply 
to  councils  that  are  confined  to  the  giving  of  advice,  and  the 
ministers  are  needed,  if  for  no  other  purpose  at  least  to  divide 
the  labor  of  the  governor,  for  all  our  Indian  officials  are  at 
present  overworked. 

This  is  not  the  place  for  the  suggestion  of  improvements 
in  the  details  of  Indian  government.  The  statement  that  all 
general  observations  upon  India  are  necessarily  absurd  is  not 
more  true  of  moral,  social,  educational,  and  religious  affairs 
than  of  mere  governmental  matters  :    "  regulation  system  " 


534-  Greater  Britain. 

and  "  non-regulation  system ;"  "  permanent  settlement  "  and 
"  thirty  years'  settlement ;"  native  participation  in  govern- 
ment, or  exclusion  of  natives — each  of  these  courses  may  be 
good  in  one  part  of  India  and  bad  in  another.  On  the  whole, 
however,  it  may  be  admitted,  that  our  Indian  government  is 
the  best  example  of  a  well-administered  despotism,  on  a  large 
scale,  existing  in  the  world.  Its  one  great  fault  is  over-cen- 
tralization ;  for,  although  our  rule  in  India  must  needs  be 
despotic,  no  reason  can  be  shown  why  its  despotism  should  be 
minute. 

The  greatest  of  the  many  changes  in  progress  in  the  East 
is  that  India  is  being  made — that  a  country  is  being  created 
under  that  name  where  none  has  yet  existed ;  and  it  is  our 
railroads,  our  annexations,  and  above  all  our  centralizing  poli- 
cy that  are  doing  the  work.  There  is  reason  to  fear  that  this 
change  will  be  hastened  by  the  extension  of  our  new  codes  to 
the  former  "  non-regulation  provinces  "  and  by  government 
from  at  home,  where  India  is  looked  upon  as  one  nation,  in- 
stead of  from  Calcutta,  where  it  is  known  to  be  still  composed 
of  fifty ;  but  so  rapid  is  the  change  that  already  the  Calcutta 
people  ai-e  as  mistaken  in  attempting  to  laugh  down  our 
phrase  "  the  people  of  India,"  as  we  were  during  the  mutiny 
when  we  believed  that  there  was  an  "  India  "  writhing  in  our 
clutches.  Whether  the  India  which  is  being  thus  rapidly 
built  up  by  our  own  hands  will  be  friendly  to  us,  or  the  re- 
verse, depends  upon  ourselves.  The  two  principles  upon 
which  our  administration  of  the  country  might  be  based  have 
long  since  been  weighed  against  each  other  by  the  English 
people,  who,  rejecting  the  principle  of  a  holding  of  India  for 
the  acquisition  of  prestige  and  trade,  have  decided  that  we 
are  to  govern  India  in  the  interest  of  the  people  of  Hindo- 
stan.  We  are  now  called  on  to  deliberate  once  more,  but  this 
time  upon  the  method  by  which  our  principle  is  to  be  worked 
out.  That  our  administration  is  already  perfect  can  hardly 
be  contended  so  long  as  no  officer  not  very  high  in  our  Indian 
service  dares  to  call  a  native  "  friend."  The  first  of  all  our 
cares  must  be  the  social  treatment  of  the  people,  for  while  by 
the  queen's  proclamation  the  natives  are  our  fellow-subjects 
they  are  in  practice  not  yet  treated  as  our  fellow-men. 


Dependencies..  f »:  Jo 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

DEPENDENCIES. 


When  on  my  way  home  to  England  I  found  myself  off 
Mocha,  with  the  Abyssinian  highlands  in  sight,  and  still  more 
when  we  were  off  Massowah,  with  the  peaks  of  Talanta  plain- 
ly visible,  I  began  to  recall  the  accounts  which  I  had  heard  at 
Aden  of  the  proposed  British  colony  on  the  Abyssinian  table- 
lands, out  of  which  the  Home  Government  has  since  been 
frightened.  The  question  of  the  desirability  or  the  reverse  of 
such  a  colony  raises  points  of  interest  on  which  it  would  be 
advisable  that  people  at  home  should  at  once  take  up  a  line. 

As  it  has  never  been  assumed  that  Englishmen  can  dwell 
permanently  even  upon  high  hills  under  the  equator,  the  prop- 
osition for  European  colonization  or  settlement  of  tropical 
Africa  may  be  easily  dismissed,  but  that  for  the  annexation  of 
tropical  countries  for  trade  purposes  remains.  It  has  hither- 
to been  accepted  as  a  general  principle  regulating  our  inter- 
course with  Eastern  nations  that  we  have  a  moral  right  to 
force  the  dark-skinned  races  to  treat  us  in  the  same  fashion  as 
that  in  which  we  are  treated  by  our  European  neighbors.  In 
practice  we  even  now  go  much  farther  than  this,  and  inflict 
the  blessings  of  Free  Trade  upon  the  reluctant  Chinese  and 
Japanese  at  the  cannon's  mouth.  It  is  hard  to  find  any  law 
but  that  of  might  whereby  to  justify  our  dealings  with  Bnr- 
mah,  China,  and  Japan.  We  are  apt  to  wrap  ourselves  up  in 
our  new-found  national  morality,  and  thiwving  upon  our  fa- 
thers all  the  blame  of  the  ill  which  has  been  done  in  India,  to 
take  to  ourselves  credit  for  the  good ;  but  it  is  obvious  to  any 
one  who  watches  the  conduct  of  our  admirals,  consuls,  and 
traders  in  the  China  seas  that  it  is  inevitable  that  China 
should  fall  to  us  as  India  fell,  unless  there  should  be  a  singu- 
lar change  in  opinion  at  home,  or  unless,  indeed,  the  Ameri- 
cans should  be  beforehand  with  us  in  the  matter.  To  say  this 
is  not  to  settle  the  disputed  question  of  whether  in  the  present 
improved  state  of  feeling,  and  with  the  present  control  exer- 
cised over  our  Eastern  officials  by  a  disinterested  press  at 


53G  Greater  Britain. 

home  and  an  interested  but  vigilant  press  in  India  and  the 
Eastern  ports,  government  of  China  by  Britain  might  not  be 
for  the  advantage  of  the  Chinese  and  the  world,  but  it  is  at 
least  open  to  serious  doubt  whether  it  would  be  to  the  advan- 
tage of  Great  Britain.  Our  ruling-classes  are  already  at  least 
sufficiently  exposed  to  the  corrupting  influences  of  power  for 
us  to  hesitate  before  we  decide  that  the  widening  of  the  na- 
tional mind  consequent  upon  the  acquisition  of  the  government 
of  China  would  outweigh  the  danger  of  a  spread  at  home  of 
love  of  absolute  authority  and  indifference  to  human  happi- 
ness and  life.  The  Americans,  also,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  will 
pause  before  they  expose  republicanism  to  the  shock  that 
would  be  caused  by  the  annexation  of  despotically-governed 
States.  In  defending  the  Japanese  against  our  assaults  and 
those  of  the  active  but  unsuccessful  French,  they  may  unhap- 
pily find,  as  we  have  often  found,  that  protection  and  annexa- 
tion are  two  words  for  the  same  thing. 

Although  the  disadvantages  are  more  evident  than  the  ad- 
vantages of  the  annexation  for  commercial  purposes  of  such 
countries  as  Abyssinia,  China,  and  Jnpan,  the  benefits  are 
neither  few  nor  hard  to  find.  The  abstract  injustice  of  an- 
nexation can  not  be  said  to  exist  in  the  cases  of  Afghanistan 
and  Abyssinia,  as  the  sentiment  of  nationality  clearly  has  no 
existence  there,  and  as  the  worst  possible  form  of  British  gov- 
ernment is  better  for  the  mass  of  the  people  than  the  best 
conceivable  rule  of  an  Abyssinian  chief.  The  dangers  of  an- 
nexation in  the  weakening  and  corrupting  of  ourselves  may 
not  unfairly  be  set  off  against  the  blessings  of  annexation  to 
the  people,  and  the  most  serious  qiiestion  for  consideration  is 
that  of  whether  dependencies  can  be  said  "  to  pay."  Social 
progress  is  necessary  to  trade,  and  we  give  to  mankind  the 
powerful  security  of  self-interest  that  we  Avill  raise  the  condi- 
tion of  the  people,  and,  by  means  of  improved  communications, 
open  the  door  to  civilization. 

It  may  be  objected  to  this  statement  that  our  exaggerated 
conscientiousness  is  the  very  reason  why  our  dependencies 
commercially  are  failures,  and  why  it  is  useless  for  xis  to  be 
totaling  up  our  loss  and  profits  while  we  willfully  throw  away 
the  advantages  that  our  energy  has  placed  in  our  hands.  If 
India  paid  as  well  as  Java,  it  may  be  shown,  we  should  be  re- 


Dependencies.   .  l>'67 

ceiving  from  the  East  GO  millions  sterling  «i  year  for  the  sup- 
port of  our  European  officials  in  Ilindostan,  and  the  total 
revenue  of  India  would  be  200  or  250  millions,  of  which  80 
millions  would  be  clear  profit  for  our  use  in  England  ;  in  other 
words,  Indian  profits  would  relieve  us  from  all  taxation  in 
England,  and  leave  us  a  considerable  and  increasing  margin 
toward  the  abolition  of  the  debt.  The  Dutch,  too,  tell  us  that 
their  system  is  more  agreeable  to  the  natives  than  our  own 
clumsy  though  well-meant  efforts  for  the  improvement  of  their 
condition,  which,  although  not  true,  is  far  too  near  the  truth 
to  allow  xis  to  rest  in  our  complacency. 

The  Dutch  system  having  been  well  weighed  at  home,  and 
deliberately  rejected  by  the  English  people  as  tending  to  the 
degradation  of  the  natives,  the  question  remains  how  far  de- 
pendencies from  which  no  profits  are  exacted  may  be  advan- 
tageously retained  for  mere  trade  purposes.  At  this  moment 
our  most  flourishing  dependencies  do  not  bear  so  much  as  their 
fair  share  of  the  expenses  of  the  empire :  Ceylon  herself  pays 
only  the  nominal  and  not  the  real  cost  of  her  defense,  and  Mauri- 
tius costs  nominally  £150,000  a  year,  and  above  half  a  million 
really  in  military  expenses,  of  which  the  colony  is  ordered  to  pay 
£45,000,  and  grumbles  much  at  paying  it.  India  herself,  al- 
though charged  with  a  share  of  the  non-effective  expenses  of 
our  army,  escapes  scot-free  in  war-time,  and  it  is  to  be  re- 
marked that  the  throwing  upon  her  of  a  small  portion  of  the 
cost  of  the  Abyssinian  war  was  defended  upon  every  ground 
except  the  true  one — namely,  that  as  an  integral  part  of  the 
empire  she  ought  to  bear  her  share  in  imperial  wars.  It  is  true 
that,  to  make  the  constitutional  doctrine  hold,  she  also  ought 
to  be  consulted,  and  that  we  have  no  possible  machinery  for 
consulting  her — a  consideration  which  of  itself  shows  our  In- 
dian Government  in  its  true  light. 

Whether,  indeed,  dependencies  pay  or  do  not  pay  their  act- 
ual cost,  their  retention  stands  on  a  wholly  different  footing 
to  that  of  colonies.  Were  we  to  leave  Australia  or  the  Cape 
we  should  continue  to  be  the  chief  customers  of  those  coun- 
tries :  were  we  to  leave  India  or  Ceylon  they  would  have  no 
customers  at  all ;  for  falling  into  anarchy,  they  would  cease  at 
once  to  export  their  goods  to  us  and  to  consume  our  manu- 
factures.    When  a  British  Governor  of  New  Zealand  wrote 

Z  2 


538  Greater  Britain. 

that  of  every  Maori  who  fell  in  war  with  us  it  might  be  said 
that, "  from  his  ignorance,  a  man  had  been  destroyed  whom  a 
few  months'  enlightenment  would  have  rendered  a  valuable 
consumer  of  British  manufactured  goods,"  he  only  set  forth 
with  grotesque  simplicity  considerations  which  weigh  with  us 
all ;  but  while  the  advance  of  trade  may  continue  to  be  our 
chief  excuse,  it  need  not  be  our  sole  excuse  for  our  Eastern 
dealings — even  for  use  toward  ourselves.  Without  repeating 
that  which  I  have  said  with  respect  to  India,  we  may  especial- 
ly bear  in  mind  that,  although  the  theory  has  suffered  from  ex- 
aggeration, our  dependencies  still  form  a  nursery  of  statesmen 
and  of  warriors,  and  that  we  should  irresistibly  fall  into  na- 
tional sluggishness  of  thought  were  it  not  for  the  world-wide 
interests  given  us  by  the  necessity  of  governing  and  educating 
the  inhabitants  of  so  vast  an  empire  as  our  own. 

One  of  the  last  of  our  annexations  was  close  upon  our  bow 
as  we  passed  on  our  way  from  Aden  up  the  Red  Sea.  The 
French  are  always  angry  when  we  seize  on  places  in  the  East, 
but  it  is  hardly  wonderful  that  they  should  have  been  per- 
plexed about  Perim.  This  island  stands  in  the  narrowest 
place  in  the  sea,  in  the  middle  of  the  deep  water,  and  the  Suez 
Canal  being  a  French  work,  and  Egypt  under  French  influence, 
our  possession  of  Perim  becomes  especially  unpleasant  to  our 
neighbors.  Not  only  this,  but  the  French  had  determined 
themselves  to  seize  it,  and  their  fleet,  bound  to  Perim,  put  in 
to  Aden  to  coal.  The  governor  had  his  suspicions,  and  hav- 
ing asked  the  French  admiral  to  dinner,  gave  him  unexcep- 
tionable champagne.  The  old  gentleman  soon  began  to  talk, 
and  directly  he  mentioned  Perim  the  governor  sent  a  pencil- 
note  to  the  harbor-master  to  delay  the  coaling  of  the  ships, 
and  one  to  the  commander  of  a  gun-boat  to  embark  as  many 
artillerymen  and  guns  as  he  could  get  on  board  in  two  hours 
and  sail  for  Perim.  When  the  French  reached  the  anchorage 
next  day  they  found  the  British  flag  flying,  and  a  great  show 
of  guns  in  position.  Whether  they  put  into  Aden  on  their 
way  back  to  France  history  does  not  say. 

Perim  is  not  the  only  island  that  lies  directly  in  the  short- 
est course  for  ships,  nor  are  the  rocks  the  only  dangers  of  the 
Red  Sea.  One  night  about  nine  o'clock,  when  we  were  off  the 
port  of  Mecca,  I  Avas  sitting  on  the  fo'castle,  right  forward,  al- 


France  in  the  East.  530 

most  on  the  sprit,  to  catch  what  breeze  we  made,  when  I  saw 
two  country  boats  about  150  yards  on  the  starboard  bow. 
Our  three  lights  were  so  bright  that  I  thought  we  must  be 
seen,  but  as  the  boats  came  on  across  our  bows  I  gave  a  shout 
which  was  instantly  followed  by  "  hard  a-port !"  from  the 
Chinaman  on  the  bridge,  and  by  a  hundred  yells  from  the  sud- 
denly-awakened boatmen.  Our  helm  luckily  enough  had  no 
time  to  act  upon  the  ship.  I  threw  myself  down  under  a 
stancheon,  and  the  sail  and  yard  of  the  leading  boat  fell  on 
our  deck  close  to  my  head,  and  the  boats  shot  past  us  amid 
shouts  of  "fire,"  caused  by  the  ringing  of  the  alarm-bell. 
When  we  had  stopped  the  ship  the  question  came — had  Ave 
sunk  the  boat  ?  We  at  once  piped  away  the  gig  with  a  Malay 
crew  and  sent  it  off  to  look  for  the  poor  wretches — but  after 
half  an  hour,  we  found  them  ourselves,  and  found  them  safe 
except  for  their  loss  of  canvas  and  their  terrible  fright.  Our 
pilot  questioned  them  in  Arabic,  and  discovered  that  each 
boat  had  on  board  100  pilgrims  ;  but  they  excused  themselves 
for  not  having  a  watch  or  light  by  saying  that  they  had  not 
seen  us  !  Between  rocks  and  pilgrim-boats  Red  Sea  naviga- 
tion is  hard  enough  for  steamers,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  which 
way  its  difficulties  will  cause  the  scale  to  turn  when  the  ques- 
tion lies  between  Euphrates  Railway  and  Suez  Canal. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

FRANCE     IN     THE     EAST. 


It  is  no  longer  possible  to  see  the  Pyramids  or  even  Heli- 
opolis  in  the  solitary  and  solemn  fashion  in  which  they  should 
be  approached.  English  "  going  out "  and  "  coming  home  " 
are  there  at  all  days  and  hours,  and  the  hundreds  of  Arabs 
selling  German  coins  and  mummies  of  English  manufacture 
are  terribly  out  of  place  upon  the  desert.  I  went  alone  to  see 
the  Sphinx,  and,  sitting  down  on  the  sand,  tried  my  best  to 
read  the  riddle  of  the  face  and  to  look  through  the  rude  carv- 
ing into  the  inner  mystery ;  but  it  would  not  do,  and  I  came 
away  bitterly  disappointed.  In  this  modern  democratic  rail- 
way-girt world  of  ours  the  ancient  has  no  place ;  the  huge 


540  GliEATEll    Bkitaix. 

Pyramids  may  remain  forever,  but  we  can  no  longer  read 
them.     A  few  months  may  sec  a  cafe  chantant  at  their  base. 

Cairo  itself  is  no  pleasant  sight.  An  air  of  dirt  and  deg- 
radation hangs  over  the  -whole  town,  and  clings  to  its  peo- 
ple, from  the  donkey-boys  and  comfit-sellers  to  the  pipe-smok- 
ing soldiers  and  the  money-changers  who  squat  behind  their 
trays.  The  wretched  fellaheen,  or  Egyptian  peasantry,  are 
apparently  the  most  miserable  of  human  beings,  and  their 
slouching  shamble  is  a  sad  sight  after  the  superb  gait  of  the 
Hindoos.  The  slave-market  of  Cairo  has  done  its  work ;  in- 
deed, it  is  astonishing  that  the  English  should  content  them- 
selves with  a  treaty  in  which  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  Egypt 
is  decreed,  and  not  take  a  single  step  to  secure  its  execution, 
while  the  slave-market  in  Cairo  continues  to  be  all  but  open 
to  the  passer.  That  the  Egyptian  Government  could  put 
down  slavery  if  it  had  the  will  can  not  he  doubted  by  those 
who  have  witnessed  the  rapidity  with  which  its  officers  act  in 
visiting  doubtful  crimes  upon  the  wrong  men.  During  my 
week's  stay  in  Alexandria  two  such  cases  came  to  my  notice : 
in  the  first,  one  of  my  fellow-passengers  unwittingly  insulted 
two  of  the  Albanian  police,  and  was  shot  at  by  one  of  them 
with  a  long  pistol.  A  number  of  Englishmen,  gathering  from 
the  public  gaming-houses  on  the  great  square,  rescued  him, 
and  beat  off  the  cavasses,  and  the  next  morning  marched 
down  to  their  consulate  and  demanded  justice.  Our  acting 
consul  went  straight  to  the  head  of  the  police,  laid  the  case 
before  him,  and  procured  the  condemnation  of  the  man  who 
shot  to  the  galleys  for  ten  years,  while  the  policeman  who  had 
looked  on  was  immediately  bastinadoed  in  the  presence  of  the 
passenger.  The  other  case  was  one  of  robbery  at  a  desert  vil- 
lage from  the  tent  of  an  English  traveller.  "When  lie  com- 
j^lained  to  the  sheik  the  order  was  given  to  bastinado  the  head 
men,  and  hold  them  responsible  for  the  amount.  The  head 
men  in  turn  gave  the  stick  to  the  householders,  and  claimed 
the  sum  from  them  ;  while  these  bastinadoed  the  vagrants,  and 
actually  obtained  from  them  the  money.  Every  male  inhab- 
itant having  thus  received  the  stick,  it  is  probable  that  tho 
actual  culprit  was  reached,  if,  indeed,  he  lived  within  tho  vil- 
lage. "  Stick-backsheesh  "  is  a  great  institution  in  Egypt,  but 
the  Turks  are  not  far  behind.     When  the  British  Consulate 


France  in  the  East.  5^-1 

at  Bussorah  was  attacked  by  thieves  some  years  ago  our  con- 
sul telegraphed  the  fact  to  the  Pacha  of  Bagdad.  The  answer 
came  at  once  :  "  Bastinado  forty  men" — and  bastinadoed  they 
were,  as  soon  as  they  had  been  selected  at  random  from  the 
population. 

Coming  to  Egypt  from  India  the  Englishman  is  inclined  to 
believe  that,  while  our  Indian  Government  is  an  averagely  suc- 
cessful despotism,  Egypt  is  misgoverned  in  an  extraordinary 
degree.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  it  is  not  fair  to  the 
King  of  Egypt  that  Ave  should  compare  his  rule  with  ours  in 
India,  and  it  is  probable  that  his  government  is  not  on  the 
Avhole  worse  than  Eastern  despotisms  always  are.  Setting  up 
as  a  "  civilized  ruler,"  the  King  of  Egypt  performs  the  duties 
of  his  position  by  buying  guns  which  he  uses  in  putting  down 
insurrections  which  he  has  fomented  and  yachts  for  which  he 
has  no  use  ;  and  he  appears  to  think  that  he  has  done  all  that 
Peter  of  Russia  himself  could  have  accomplished  when  he 
sends  a  young  Egyptian  to- Manchester  to  learn  the  cotton - 
trade,  or  to  London,  to  acquire  the  principles  of  foreign  com- 
merce, and  on  his  return  to  Alexandria  sets  him  to  manage 
the  soap-works  or  to  conduct  the  vice-regal  band.  The  aping 
of  the  forms  of  "  Western  civilization,"  which  in  Egypt  means 
French  vice,  makes  the  court  of  Alexandria  look  Avorse  than 
it  is :  Ave  expect  the  slave-market  and  the  harem  in  the  East, 
but  the  King  of  Egypt  superadds  the  Trianon  and  a  bad  imi- 
tation of  Mabile. 

The  court  influence  shows  itself  in  the  actions  of  the  peo- 
ple, or  rather  the  influence  at  Avork  upon  the  court  is  pressing 
also  upon  the  people.  For  knavery  no  place  can  touch  the 
modern  Alexandria.  One  Avord,  hoAvever,  is  far  f  rom.describ- 
ing  all  the  infamies  of  the  city.  It  surpasses  Cologne  for 
smells,  Benares  for  pests,  Saratoga  for  gaming,  Paris  itself  for 
vice.  There  is  a  layer  of  French  "  civilization  "  of  the  Avorst 
kind  over  the  semi-bai'barism  of  Cairo ;  but  still  the  toAvn  is 
chiefly  Oriental.  Alexandria,  on  the  other  hand,  is  completely 
Europeanized,  and  has  a  Avhite  population  of  seventy  or  eighty 
thousand.  Tbe  Arabs  are  kept  in  a  huge  village  outside  the 
fortifications,  and  French  is  the  only  language  spoken  in  the 
shops  and  hotels.     Alexandria  is  a  French  town. 

It  is  evident  enough  that  the  Suez  Canal  scheme  has  been 


542  Greater  Britain. 

from  the  beginning  a  blind  for  the  occupation  of  Egypt  by- 
Trance,  and  that,  however  interesting  to  the  shareholders  may 
be  the  question  of  its  physical  or  commercial  success,  the  prob- 
abilities of  failure  have  had  but  little  weight  with  the  French 
Government.  The  foundation  of  the  Messageric  Company 
with  national  capital,  to  carry  imaginary  mails,  secured  the 
preponderance  of  French  influence  in  the  towns  of  Egypt,  and 
it  is  not  certain  that  we  should  not  look  upon  the  occupation 
of  Saigon  itself  as  a  mere  blind. 

Of  the  temporary  success  of  the  French  policy  there  can  be 
no  doubt :  the  English  railway-guards  have  lately  been  dismiss- 
ed from  the  Government  railway  line,  and  a  huge  tricolor 
floats  from  the  entrance  to  the  new  docks  at  Suez,  while  a  still 
more  gigantic  one  waves  over  the  hotel ;  the  King  of  Egypt, 
glad  to  find  a  third  Power  which  he  can  play  off  when  neces- 
sary, against  both  England  and  Russia,  takes  shares  in  the  ca- 
nal. It  is  when  Ave  ask, "  What  is  the  end  that  the  French 
have  in  view  ?"  that  we  find  it  strangely  small  by  the  side  of 
the  means.  The  French  of  the  present  day  appear  to  have  no 
foreign  policy,  unless  it  is  a  sort  of  desire  to  extend  the  empire 
of  their  language,  their  dance-tunes,  and  their  fashions  ;  and 
the  natural  wish  of  their  ruler  to  engage  in  no  enterprise  that 
Avill  outlast  his  life  prevents  their  having  any  such  permanent 
policy  as  that  of  Russia  or  the  United  States.  An  Egyptian 
Pacha  hardly  put  the  truth  too  strongly  when  he  said, "  There 
is  nothing  permanent  about  France  except  Mabile." 

The  Suez  Canal  is  being  pushed  with  vigor,  although  the 
labor  of  the  hundreds  of  Greek  and  Italian  navvies  is  very 
different  to  that  of  the  tens  of  thousands  of  impressed  fellah- 
een. The  withdrawal  from  the  Company  of  the  forced  la- 
bor of  the  peasants  has  demonstrated  that  the  king  is  at  heart 
not  well-disposed  toward  the  scheme,  for  the  remonstrances 
of  England  have  never  prevented  the  employment  of  slave-la- 
bor upon  Avorks  out  of  which  there  was  money  to  be  made 
for  the  vice-regal  purse.  The  difficulty  of  clearing  and  keep- 
ing clear  the  channel  at  Port  Said,  at  the  Mediterranean  end, 
is  well  known  to  the  Pacha  and  his  engineers  :  it  is  not  diffi- 
cult, indeed,  to  cut  through  the  bar,  nor  impossible  to  keep  the 
cutting  open,  but  the  effect  of  the  great  piers  will  merely  be 
to  push  the  Nile  silt  farther  seaward,  and  again  and  again  new 


France  in  the  East.  543 

bars  will  form  in  front  of  the  canal.  That  the  canal  is  phys- 
ically possible  no  one  doubts,  but  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  it 
can  pay.  Even  if  "sve  suppose,  moreover,  that  the  canal  will 
prove  a  complete  success,  the  French  Government  will  only 
find  that  it  has  spent  millions  upon  digging  a  canal  for  En- 
gland's use. 

The  neutralization  of  Egypt  has  lately  been  proposed  by 
writers  of  the  Comtist  school,  but  to  what  end  is  far  from 
clear.  "  The  interests  of  civilization"  are  the  pretext,  but 
when  summoned  by  a  Comtist "  civilization"  and  "  humanity" 
generally  appear  in  a  French  shape.  Were  we  to  be  attacked 
in  India  by  the  French  or  Russians,  no  neutralization  would 
prevent  our  sending  our  troops  to  India  by  the  shortest  road, 
and  fighting  wherever  we  thought  best.  If  we  were  not  so 
attacked,  neutralization,  as  far  as  we  are  concerned,  would  be 
a  useless  ceremony.  If  France  goes  beyond  her  customary 
meddlesomeness  and  settles  down  in  Egypt  we  shall  evidently 
have  to  dislodge  her,  but  to  neutralize  the  country  would  be 
to  settle  her  there  ourselves.  It  would  be  idle  to  deny  that 
the  position  of  France  in  the  East  is  connected  with  the  claim 
put  forth  by  her  to  the  moral  leadership  of  the  world.  The 
"  chief  power  of  Europe"  and  "leader  of  Christendom"  must 
needs  be  impatient  of  the  dominance  of  America  in  the  Pacif- 
ic and  of  Britain  in  the  East,  and  seeks  by  successes  on  the 
side  of  India  to  bury  the  memories  of  Mexico.  One  of  the 
hundred  "  missions  of  France,"  one  of  the  thousand  "imperial 
ideas,"  is  the  "  regeneration  of  the  East."  Treacherous  En- 
gland is  to  be  confined  to  her  single  island,  and  barbarous 
Russia  to  bo  shut  up  in  the  Siberian  snows.  England  may  be 
left  to  answer  for  herself,  but  before  we  surrender  even  Russia 
to  the  Comtist  priests  Ave  should  remember  that,  just  as  the 
Russian  despotism  is  dangerous  to  the  world  from  the  stupid- 
ity of  its  barbarism,  so  the  French  democracy  is  dangerous 
through  its  feverish  sympathies,  blundering  "  humanity,"  and 
unlimited  ambition. 

The  present  reaction  against  exaggerated  nationalism  is  in 
itself  a  sign  that  our  national  mind  is  in  a  healthy  state :  but 
while  we  distrust  nationalism  because  it  is  illogical  and  nar- 
row, we  must  remember  that  "  cosmopolitanism "  has  been 
made  the  excuse  for  childish  absurdities  and  a  cloak  for  des- 


544  Greater  Britain. 

peratc  schemes.  Love  of  race  among  the  English  rests  upon 
a  firmer  base  than  either  love  of  mankind  or  love  of  Britain, 
for  it  reposes  upon  a  subsoil  of  things  known — the  ascertain, 
ed  virtues  and  powers  of  the  English  people.  For  nations 
such  as  France  and  Spain,  with  few  cares  outside  their  Eu- 
ropean territories,  national  fields  for  action  are,  perhaps,  too 
narrow,  and  the  interests  of  even  the  vast  territories  inhabited 
by  the  English  race  may,  in  a  less  degree,  be  too  small  for 
English  thought ;  but  there  is  India — and  the  responsibility 
of  the  absolute  government  of  a  quarter  of  the  human  race  is 
no  small  thing.  If  we  strive  to  advance  ourselves  in  the  love 
of  truth,  to  act  justly  toward  Ireland,  and  to  govern  India 
aright,  Ave  shall  have  enough  of  work  to,  occupy  us  for  many 
years  to  come,  and  shall  leave  a  greater  name  in  history  than 
if  we  concerned  ourselves  with  settling  the  affairs  of  Poland. 
If  we  need  a  wider  range  for  our  sympathies  than  that  which 
even  India  will  supply  we  may  find  it  in  our  friendships  with 
the  other  sections  of  the  race ;  and  if,  unhappily,  one  result  of 
the  present  awakening  of  England  to  free  life  should  be  a  re- 
turn of  the  desire  to  meddle  in  the  affairs  of  other  folk  Ave 
shall  find  a  better  outlet  for  our  energy  in  aiding  our  Teuton- 
ic brethren  in  their  struggle  for  unity  than  in  assisting  Impe- 
rial France  to  spread  Benoitonisme  through  the  Avorld. 

We  can  not,  if  Ave  Avould,  be  indifferent  spectators  of  the 
extraAragances  of  France :  if  she  is  at  present  Aveak  in  the 
East,  she  is  strong  at  home.  At  this  moment  avc  are  spend- 
ing ten  or  fifteen  millions  a  year  in  order  that  we  may  be  equal 
Avith  her  in  military  force,  and  Ave  hang  upon  the  Avords  of  her 
ruler  to  know  Avhether  Ave  are  to  have  peace  or  Avar.  Although 
it  may  not  be  Avise  for  us  to  declare  that  this  humiliating  spec- 
tacle shall  shortly  have  an  end,  it  is  at  least  advisable  that  Ave 
should  refrain  from  aiding  the  French  in  their  professed  en- 
deavors to  obtain  for  other  peoples  liberties  which  they  are 
incapable  of  preserving  for  themselves. 

If  the  English  race  has  a  "  mission  "  in  the  world  it  is  the 
making  it  impossible  that  the  peace  of  mankind  on  earth  should 
depend  upon  the  Avill  of  a  single  man. 


The  English.  545 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

THE  ENGLISH. 

Lv  America  we  have  seen  the  struggle  of  the  dear  races 
against  the  cheap — the  endeavors  of  the  English  to  hold  their 
own  against  the  Irish  and  Chinese.  In  New  Zealand  we  found 
the  stronger  and  more  energetic  race  pushing  from  the  earth 
the  shrewd  and  laborious  descendants  of  the  Asian  Malays ; 
in  Australia  the  English  triumphant,  and  the  cheaper  races 
excluded  from  the  soil  not  by  distance  merely  but  by  arbitrary 
legislation;  in  India  we  saw  the  solution  of  the  problem  of 
the  officering  of  the  cheaper  by  the  dearer  race.  Everywhere 
we  have  found  that  the  difficulties  which  impede  the  progress 
to  universal  dominion  of  the  English  people  lie  in  the  conflict 
with  the  cheaper  races.  The  result  of  our  survey  is  such  as 
to  give  us  reason  for  the  belief  that  race  distinctions  will  long 
continue ;  that  miscegenation  will  go  but  little  way  toward 
blending  races ;  that  the  dearer  are,  on  the  whole,  likely  to  de- 
stroy the  cheaper  people,  and  that  Saxondom  will  rise  triumph- 
ant from  the  doubtful  struggle. 

The  countries  ruled  by  a  race  whose  very  scum  and  out- 
casts have  founded  empires  in  every  portion  of  the  globe  even 
now  consist  of  9^  millions  of  square  miles,  and  contain  a  popu- 
lation of  300  millions  of  people.  Their  surface  is  five  times 
as  great  as  that  of  the  Empire  of  Darius,  and  four  and  a  half 
times  as  large  as  the  Roman  Empire  at  its  greatest  extent. 
It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  in  power  the  English  coun- 
tries would  be  more  than  a  match  for  the  remaining  nations 
of  the  world,  whom  in  the  intelligence  of  their  people  and  the 
extent  and  wealth  of  their  dominions  they  already  consider- 
ably surpass.  Russia  gains  ground  steadily,  we  are  told,  but 
so  do  we.  If  we  take  maps  of  the  English-governed  countries 
and  of  the  Russian  countries  of  fifty  years  ago,  and  compare 
them  with  the  English  and  Russian  countries  of  to-day,  we 
find  that  the  Saxon  has  outstripped  the  Muscovite  in  conquest 
and  in  colonization.  The  extensions  of  the  United  States  alone 
are  equal  to  all  those  of  Russia.     Chili,  La  Plata,  and  Peru 


546  Greater  Britain. 

must  eventually  become  English :  the  Red  Indian  race  that 
now  occupies  those  countries  can  not  stand  against  our  colo- 
nists ;  and  the  future  of  the  table-lands  of  Africa  and  that  of 
Japan  and  of  China  is  as  clear.  Even  in  the  tropical  plains 
the  negroes  alone  seem  able  to  withstand  us.  No  possible 
series  of  events  can  prevent  the  English  race  itself  in  1970 
numbering  300  millions  of  beings — of  one  national  character 
and  one  tongue.  Italy,  Spain,  France,  Russia  become  pigmies 
by  the  side  of  such  a  people. 

Many  who  are  well  aware  of  the  power  of  the  English  na- 
tions are  nevertheless  disposed  to  believe  that  our  own  is 
morally,  as  well  as  physically,  the  least  powerful  of  the  sec- 
tions of  the  race,  or,  in  other  words,  that  we  are  overshadow- 
ed by  America  and  Australia.  The  rise  to  power  of  our  south- 
ern colonies  is,  however,  distant,  and  an  alliance  between  our- 
selves and  America  is  still  one  to  be  made  on  equal  terms. 
Although  we  are  forced  to  contemplate  the  speedy  loss  of  our 
manufacturing  supremacy  as  coal  becomes  cheaper  in  Ameri- 
ca and  dearer  in  Old  England,  we  have  nevertheless  ns  much 
to  bestow  on  America  as  .she  has  to  confer  on  us.  The  pos- 
session of  India  offers  to  ourselves  that  element  of  vastness  of 
dominion  which,  in  this  age,  is  needed  to  secure  width  of 
thought  and  nobility  of  purpose ;  but  to  the  English  race  our 
possession  of  India,  of  the  coasts  of  Africa,  and  of  the  ports 
of  China  offers  the  possibility  of  planting  free  institutions 
among  the  dark-skinned  races  of  the  world. 

The  ultimate  future  of  any  one  section  of  our  race,  however, 
is  of  little  moment  by  the  side  of  its  triumph  as  a  whole,  but 
the  power  of  English  laws  and  English  principles  of  govern- 
ment is  not  merely  an  English  question — its  continuance  is 
essential  to  the  freedom  of  mankind. 

Steaming  up  from  Alexandria  along  the  coast  of  Crete  and 
Arcadia,  and  through  the  Ionian  Archipelago,  I  reached  Brin- 
disi,  and  thence  passed  on  through  Milan  toward  home.  This 
is  the  route  that  our  Indian  mails  should  take  until  the  Eu- 
phrates road  is  made. 


APPENDIX. 


A   MAORI    DINNER. 

For  those  who  would  make  trial  of  Maori  dishes,  here  is  a  native 
bill  of  fare,  such  as  can  be  imitated  in  the  south  of  England : 

IIAKARI  MAORI— A  MAORI  FEAST. 
BILL    OF    FARE. 

SOUP. 
Kota  Kota Any  shell-fish. 

fish. 

Inanga Whitebait  (boiled  in  milk,  with  leeks). 

Pihakau Lamprey  (stewed). 

Tuna Eels  (steamed). 

MADE    DISHES. 

Pukeko Moor-hen  (steamed). 

Koura Craw-fish  (boiled). 

Tui  Tui Thrush  (boiled). 

Kereru Pigeon  (baked  in  clay). 

KOAST. 
Pooka Pork  (short  pig). 

GAME. 
Parera Wild  duck  (roasted  on  embers). 

VEGETABLES. 

Pattkena Pumpkin. 

Ivamu  Kamu Vegetable  Marrow. 

Kaputi Cabbage  (steamed). 

Kumata Sweet  Potatoes. 

SWEETS. 

Tataramoa Cranberries  (steamed). 

Taua Damsons  (steamed  with  sugar). 

DESSERT. 

Karamu Currants. 

PlKAKAKlKA,  Dec,  1803. 


INDEX. 


AuOBIGtNtB,  American  treatment  of,  con- 
trasted with  English,  97,  98;  extirpation 
of,  in  Tasmania,  343  ;  hostility  of  English 
military  to,  344;  contempt  of  the  settlers 
for,  345. 

Acapulco  (see  Mexico). 

Adelaide,  354;  climate  of,  864;  curious  fact 
relating  to  wheat  trade,355 ;  uthe  farinace- 
ous village,  so-called  by  Victorians,"  355; 
character  of  the  buildings,  dress,  and  peo- 
ple, 355;  the  bay  of,  at  early  morning,  362. 

Agra  (see  India — Mohammedan  Cities). 

Alabama  claims,  feeling  of  Americans  re- 
specting, 216;  their  opinion  of  England's 
refusal  to  arbitrate  on  the  entire  question, 
216-21S. 

Albany  (sec  Convict). 

Alexandria,  a  French  town,  541  (see  also 
French  in  Egypt). 

Allahabad  (see  India — Mohammedan  Cities). 

Alleghanies,  eastern  and  western  slopes  of,  84. 

America,  wear  and  tear  of  life  in,  50  ;  in-door 
life  of  children,  50;  uuhealthiness  of  tilling 
virgin  soil,  etc.,  51 ;  politics  discarded  by 
the  most  intellectual  men  in  the  slave-rul- 
ing days,  52,53;    new  map  of  the  States, 

,  C2  ;  splendid  appropriations  for  education- 
al purposes,  74  (see  Pacific  Railroad  ;  rail- 
ways preceding  population,  SO ;  North 
America,  conformation  of,  as  compared 
with  other  continents,  S4 ;  American 
scenery,  165;  difficulty  of  forming  an  idea 
of  America,  220 ;  apparent  Latinization  of, 
221 ;  power  of,  now  predominant  in  the  Pa- 
cific, 231 ;  democracy  of,  different  from  that 
of  Australia,  314;  social  difference,  314. 

American  Desert,  the,  106;  alkali  dust,  106, 
140,  152  ;  highwaymen,  152. 

Union,  not  likely  to  fall  to  pieces,  199; 

tendency  of  the  time  to  great  powers,  not 
small  ones.  199  ;  interest  of  all  the  States 
in  union,  199,  200 ;  real  danger  from  the 
seizure  of  the  Atlantic  coast  cities  by  the 
Irish,  200;  shape  of  North  America,  render- 
ing almost  impossible  the  existence  of  dis- 
tinctive peoples  within  it,  223. 

American  opinion  of  Great  Britain,  France, 
and  Russia,  201 ;  of  the  Fenians  and  Irish 
complaints,  215;  the  Alabama  claims,  216. 

—  parties,  Republican  and  Democratic, 

2.14-206 ;  radical  watchfulness  needed  to 
guard  the  country  against  great  dangers, 
'206 ;  great  i-sue  involved  in  the  struggle 
between  the  parties,  207;  possibility  of  the 
future  abolition  of  the  Presidency,  203. 


American  sensitiveness  to  English  opinion, 
218;  an  instance  of  the  injustice  done  to 
Americans  during  thewar,219;  their  firm- 
ness while  the  Trent  affair  was  pending, 
219. 

Ann  Arbor  Institute,  men  sent  by  it  to  the 
war,  74 ;  officers  returned  to  complete  their 
studies,  74. 

Artemus  Ward,  joke  of,  to  Elder  Stenhouse, 
118 ;  in  Virginia  City,  148. 

Atlantic  States  of  America  (see  Western 
States). 

Attar-of-roses  (see  India — Umritsur). 

Auckland,  effect  on,  of  the  banana-tree,  32 
(.see  aUo  Australia  and  Rival  Colonies). 

Aurora,  in  California,  154. 

Austin,  the  pleasures  and  immunities  of  a 
Western  tour,  143-145;  Chinese  quarter 
of,  144;  a  farewell  "-swop,"  145. 

Australasia,  misuse  of  the  term  in  England, 
233  (see  also  Rival  Colonies) ;  youth  of  Aus- 
tralia and  their  future,  2S6  ;  climate  of, 
236;  eager  democracy  of,  286;  different 
from  the  republicanism  of  the  United 
States,  2S6  (see  Coal) ;  poetic  native 
names,  305  ;  social  differences  between 
Australia  and  America,  314;  prospects  of, 
373 ;  progress  and  extent  of,  373,  374 ;  ob- 
stacles to  the  peopling  of  the  whole  of,  374; 
want  of  railroads,  374 ;  small  amount  of 
agricultural  land  as  compared  with  extent 
of  territory,  375;  moral  and  intellectual 
health  of,  375 ;  love  of  mirth,  and  absence 
of  the  American  downrlghtness,  etc.,  in 
pursuit  of  truth,  375;  waste  of  food,  375; 
manners,  etc.,  376;  dress,  376;  imitation 
of  home  customs,  376;  University  of  Syd- 
ney, 376 ;  its  Conservatism  as  distinguish- 
ed from  the  Radicalism  of  the  Western 
Universities,  377. 

Australia,  rivalry  of  the  colonies  of,  81. 

— ,  West  (see  Convicts). 

■,  South,  probability  of  becoming  the 


granary  of  the  Pacific  colonies,  355 ;  pro- 
duction of  wheat,  359;  the  land  system, 
358  (see  Women,  358,  360);  Scotch  and 
German  immigrants,  360  ;  political  life  of 
the  colony,  361 ;  expedition  to  fix  a  new 
capital  for  the  northern  territory,  361 ;  pos- 
sibility that  the  North  may  be  found  a  land 
of  gold,  362 ;  from  South  to  West  Australia, 
363. 


B. 


Bam.ahat  (sec  Victorian  Ports). 
Ballot  (see  Tasmania). 


550 


Index. 


Banana-tree,  injurious  effect  of,  in  affording 
food  without  labor  in  the  Southern  States 
of  America,  Panama,  Ceylon,  Mexico, 
Auckland,  etc.,  32,  33 ;  a  devil's  agent,  32  ; 
its  danger  to  Florida  and  Louisiana,  33. 

Benares  (see  India). 

Bondigo  (see  Sandhurst). 

Benita,  Cape,  ISO. 

Bentham,  his  philosophy  in  Utah,  112. 

Bhawulpore  (see  India — Native  States). 

Black  Mountains  (sec  Rocky  Mountain?),  105. 

Bombay  (see  India — Bombay). 

Boston,  its  Elizabethan  English  and  old  En- 
glish names,  54;  its  readiness  during  the 
war,  05. 

Brannan,  the  chief  mover  in  repressing  dis- 
orders by  Lynch  law  in  California,  109  ; 
hii  speech  to  his  fellow-citizens,  170. 

Erighani  Young,  Elder  Evans,  the  "  Shak- 
er's," opinion  of,  110;  conversation  of  three 
hours  with,  111 ;  his  blessing  at  parting, 
111;  "  Is  Brigham  sincere?"  Ill;  his  posi- 
tion as  a  Prophet,  while  in  fact  a  Utilita- 
rian deist,  112;  his  practical  revelations, 
112;  and  manner  of  announcing  them,  112; 
his  definition  of  the  highest  inspiration, 
113;  liis  position  among  his  people, 113; 
Ilia  Immense  personal  influence,  114;  his 
sons  sent  out  each  to  work  his  own  wjiy  in 
the  world,  131. 

Brisbane  (see  Queensland). 

Broadbrim,  the  mark  of  the  Southern  guer- 
rilla, IS. 

Buffalo  herds  on  the  plains,  83  ;  skeletons  of, 
S>. 

Bi-ffalo  town,  gloom  of,  OS. 

Bullcr,  the  (see  Ilokitika). 


Cairo,  dirt  and  degradation  of,  510;  slave- 
market, 540  ;  punishment  by  selection,540 ; 
misgovernmentof  the  country,  541  (see  also 
French  in  Egypt). 

Calcutta  (see  India). 

California  and  Nevada,  rectification  of  fron- 
tiers of,  154. 

California,  the  terms  Golden  State  and  El 
Dorado  well  applied  to,  15T  ;  scenery,  157  ; 
names  given  to  places  by  diggers, 100  ;  lux- 
ury, etc.,  102  (see  Lynch  Law);  Episcopa- 
lianism  flourishing  in,  1S6;  its  prospects  in 
the  Pacific,  ISO;  nitro-glycerine,  the  night- 
mare of,  1S7  ;  the  valley  of,  188  ;  position 
of,  on  the  overland  route  to  the  Pacific,  11)5; 
extent  of,  195 ;  climate,  195. 

Californian  celebrities,  portraits  of,  147. 

Cambridge,  Mass.  (see  Harvard). 

Canada,  57  (see  Quebec) ;  religion  and  poli- 
ties,01 ;  disunion  of  French  and  Irish  Cath- 
olics, 01 ;  French  support  of  the  Confeder- 
ation scheme,  01  ;  Fenians  in,  01 ;  need  of 
British  Columbia  to  the  Confederation,  01  ; 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  real  confedera- 
tion, 03 ;  emigration  to,  03 ;  emigration 
from,  to  the  United  States,  04  ;  jealousy  of 
the  Canadian  States,  04;  their  dislike  to 
America,  05;  difficulty  of  defending,  05  ; 
protective  duties,  05;  advantages  of  inde- 
pendence, 00  ;  narrowness  of  English  views 
respecting,  G7;    belief  of  the   Canadians 


that  they  possessed  the  only  possible  road 
to  China  for  the  trade  of  the  future,  70 
(sec  Pacific  Kailroad). 

Canterbury,  New  Zealand,  Episcopalian  col- 
ony, 243 ;  province  of,  divided  both  politi- 
cally and  geographically,  243  ;  antagonism 
between  the  Christ  church  people  and  the 
diggers,  243;  dignified  Episcopalian  char- 
acter of  Christchurch,  245;  its  importation 
of  rooks  from  England  to  caw  in  the  elm- 
trees  of  the  cathedral  close,  while  Ilokitika 
imports  men,  245. 

Capital,  future,  of  the  United  States,  S5. 

Carolina,  North,  crackers,  19. 

Cartier,  early  explorer,  75. 

Cashmere  (see  India— Colonization  and  Na- 
tive states). 

Caste,  assailed  by  railways  and  telegraph, 
40S;  difficulty  of  discovering  the  opinion 
of  a  Hindoo,  415;  idea  of  good  manners, 
410;  the  secret  history  of  the  great  rebel- 
lion, 410 ;  British  ignorance  of  the  real  feel- 
ing of  the  people,  41G;  census  as  viewed 
by  the  Hindoos,  417  :  its  revelations  with 
respect  to  caste  and  "■callings,"  417,  41S; 
beggars,  418;  superstition,  419;  a  play  at 
demonology,  419 ;  the  praying-wheel,  419 ; 
a  saint's  privileges  in  the  days  of  the  Em- 
peror Akbar,  420  ;  strength  of  caste,  421  ; 
missionaries  and  Hindoo  reformers,  421, 
422;  Hindoo  deists,  423  ;  Christians,  423  ; 
different  position  of  native  Catholics  and 
Protestants,  424;  fewness  of  native  Chris- 
tians, 424;  infanticide,  424,  425;  remark- 
able changes  in  the  last  few  years,  4-5; 
progress  of  the  spirit  of  Christianity,  425. 

Catholicism  not  "  fashionable"  in  America, 
ISO. 

Caucus,  King,  211;  Americans,  on  the  deri- 
vation of  the  term,  211. 

Cawnpore  (see  India — Moliammedan  Cities). 

Cemeteries,  Hollywood,  Richmond,  27  ;  Lone 
Mountain  Cemetery  in  California,  the  most 
beautiful  in  America,  1S1 ;  other  American 
cemeteries,  181. 

Census,  curious  results  of,  in  India,  410-41 S. 

Centre,  government  from  the,  82  ;  ancient 
and  modern  views  of,  S2,  S3 ;  centre  of 
United  States,  85. 

Ceylon  (see  Kaudy). 

Ceylon,  Maritime,  3SG ;  the  streets  of  Point 
da  Galle,  38S;  women  and  men  of,  3SS; 
mixture  of  races,  3SS;  American  mission- 
aries, quaint  humor  of,  388  ;  beggars,  388 ; 
gem  and  jewel  sellers,  trade  in  precious 
stones,  359 ;  British  soldiers  in  white,  3S9  ; 
heat  at  night,  390  ;  the  morning  gun,  390 ; 
character  of  the  (Singhalese,  391  ;  trans- 
lucent water,  and  brilliance  of  color  at  the 
bottom,  391;  a  Cinghalese  dinner,  392; 
a  stage-coach  ride  to  Colombo,  392 ;  aspect 
of  the  fine  road,  crowded  with  all  ranks  of 
the  people,  392 ;  one  continuous  village, 
393  ;  dense  population  and  food  of  the  peo- 
ple on  the  coast,  393 ;  Colombo,  393 ;  trees 
and  foliage,  393 ;  a  garden  scene.  394 ; 
fort,  or  "European  town"  of,  394;  the 
most  graceful  street  in  the  world,  394  ;  the 
peak  where  Adam  mourned  his  son  a  hun- 
dred years,  394  ;  Ceylon  Coffee  Company's 
Establishment,  394;  steam  factory,  394; 
French  Catholic  priests,  395 ;  their  success, 


Index. 


551 


305;    the  old  Dutch  quarter,  395;  rapid 
changes  from  heat  to  cold,  G90. 

(Jhaudiere  Falls  (Ottawa),  C7. 

Chicago  (see  San  Francisco  and  Chicago, etc.). 

Chickahominy,  the  scene  of  M'Clellau's  de- 
feat, 23. 

China,  coolies  from,  in  the  Southern  States 
of  America,  32 ;  >*  one  man  and  a  China- 
liinn,"  188;  a  Chinese  theatre,  1S9;  pe- 
culiarity of  its  drama,  1S9  ;  the  second 
month  and  third  act  of  the  play,  IS;)  ;  a 
Chinese  restaurant,  190;  saucer  aud  chop- 
slicks  for  the  author,  190;  gaming-houses, 
l')1 ;  Chinese  industry  and  cleanliness, 
192;  similarity  of  faces  common  to  all 
colored  races,  192;  benevolent  societies, 
192  ;  wealth  of  merchants,  193  ;  prejudice 
against  on  the  part  of  Americans,  as  also 
on  that  of  the  Australians,  193;  Chinese 
expostulations  against  the  prejudice,  193 ; 
cowardice  of,  193^  practical  slavery  in 
California,  193  ;  the  Irish  of  Asia,  194 ; 
capability  for  work,  194;  the  serious  side 
of  the  Chinese  problem,  194. 

Chinese,  first  arrival  among,  144 ;  in  Cali- 
fornia, 159;  a  tiny  Chinese  theatre,  159; 
as  tax-payers,  160  (see  China) ;  at  Mel- 
bourne, 293;  at  Sandhurst,  301 ;  anti-Chi- 
nese mobs,  301;  unjust  treatment  of,  301, 
302 ;  hunted  with  bloodhounds,  302  ;  mar- 
riage between,  and  Irish  women,  302 ; 
character  of,  as  citizens  in  Australia,  302  ; 
restaurants  of,  302 ;  in  the  Australian  la- 
bor-market, 332-334. 

Churches,  in  America,  Catholic  and  Episco- 
palian, ISO,  224;  Spiritualists  and  Unita- 
rians, 225 ;  Shakers  and  Communists,  225 ; 
Mormons,  225;  Radical  Unitarians,  225; 
tenets  and  claims  of  the  Spiritualists,  220  ; 
the  Spiritual  Clarion,  22G  ;  rumored  num- 
ber of  Spiritualists  in  America,  22G  ;  the 
Germans  mostly  pure  Materialists,  22G 
(see  also  Canterbury,  Otago,  and  New  Zea 
land);  Catholics,  in  Australia,  312 ;  "god 
less  education,"  313;  Churches  in  Victoria 
nearly  all  of  the  well-known  English  names, 
31S;  absence  of  the  American  names,  31S  ; 
diguity  of  character  arising  from  the 
American  religious  feeling.  31S,-  Australian 
churches,  377 ;  Hindoo  churches,  English 
and  native,  421 ;  Church  of  the  Hindoo 
Deists,  415-425;  a  Sikh  revival,  406; 
Parsee  religion,  512. 

Cincinnati,  smoke  of,  6-!. 

Civilization,  limits  of  Westward,  SG ;  "civ 
ilization  means  whisky,"  S6. 

Coal  (see  Pacific),  in  New  South  Wale.",  202  ; 
its  importance  to  Australia,  292  ;  value,  to 
Sydney,  293. 

Coalville,  the  Mormon  Newcastle,  109. 
Cocoas,  Island  of,  kingdom  of  John  Boss,  3SG. 

Colonial  Government  (see  Squatter  and  De- 
mocracy). 

Colonies,  taxation  of  England  in  aid  of 
wealthy,  379  ;  of  Canada,  3S0 ;  exclusion 
of  English  production.!  from,  3S0 ;  cost  to 
England,  380  ;  refusal  of  the,  to  contribute 
toward  the  cost  of  imperial  wars,  3S0 ; 
readiness  of  the  old  American  colonists  to 
do  so,  3S0  ;  position  of  imperial  soldiers  in 
the  colonies,  3S1 ;  absurdity  of  supposing 
tlrat  the  Australians  would  be  in  danger  if 


separated  from  England,  3S1 ;  our  defense 
of,  necessarily  of  least  value  when  most 
needed,  382;  and  really  a  source  of  weak- 
ness to  the  colonies,  382 ;  separation  no 
loss  to  England,  382;  trade  with  Canada 
and  with  the  United  States  of  America, 
383 ;  with  Egypt,  3S3 ;  question  of  the  out- 
let for  population,  3S3 ;  strength  of  great 
and  small  states,  3S3  ;  the  question  of  col- 
ouies  preventing  the  insularity  of  mind 
that  might  belong  to  a  nation  of  a  limited 
area,  384;  separation  not  to  be  desired  if 
union  can  be  continued  on  fair  terms  to  tho 
mother-land,  and  with  advantage  to  the 
colonies,  384,  3S5 ;  if  not  so,  separation  not 
dangerous  to  either,  3S5. 

Coloradau  farm,  01 ;  a  Coloradan  boast,  04  ; 
Coloradan  u  boys  "  a  fine  handsome  race, 
103  ;  strange  insects,  104. 

Colorado,  rival  Governors  of,  92  ;  great  idea 
of  Gilpin  the  Pioneer,  92 ;  extent  and 
beauty  of  country,  101,  103;  Upper  Colo- 
rado, or  Green  River,  lost  for  a  thousand 
miles  in  undiscovered  wilds,  107. 

Columbo  (see  Ceylon,  Maritime.) 

Conservative,  Colonial,  what  is  a,  £07  (sec 
Squatters). 

Convicts  (sec  Tasmania),  settlement  of  South 
Australia,  363;  petition  to  be  made  a  pe- 
nal settlement,  363 ;  convicts  or  emanci- 
pists in  the  colony,  364 ;  population  of  West 
Australia,  364 ;  convict  escapes,  364 ;  pun- 
ishment, 364 ;  "  bolters  for  a  change,"  365 ; 
murder  to  escape  convict  labor,  305;  trans- 
portation, past  and  present,  365,  366;  en- 
tire colonies  formed  of  convicts,  366  ;  "so- 
ciety "  at  Botany  Bay,  306 ;  all  professions, 
etc.  filled  by  convicts,  366 ;  petition  against 
transportation  from  Tasmania,  3CG  ;  fear- 
ful demoralization  of  the  colony,  367 ;  free 
female  laborers  sent  out,  368 ;  the  assign- 
ment system,  36S;  crime  in  the  colony, 
3G9  ;  bush-rangers,  369 ;  end  of  the  system, 

369  ;  demoralization  of  the  convict  voyage, 

370  ;  horrid  conversation,  370  ;  the  hope 
that  Tasmania  may  be  purified  by  the  gold- 
find  and  free  selection,  370;  the  transpor- 
tation system,  371 ;  its  cost,  371;  its  sever- 

'    ity  to  the  least  guilty,  371 ;  the  future  of 

convict  treatment,  371,  372. 
Co-operative  labor,  negro  (see  Davis). 
Costa  Rica,  220. 
Cumberland  and  Mcrrimac,  wrecks  of,  18. 


D. 

D.vnitfs,  113  ;  rorter  Rockwell,  chief  of,135; 
strange  stories  of,  135;  bands  organized 
to  defend  the  first  Presidency  of  the  Mor- 
mons, 136;  their  reported  deeds,  136. 

Davidson,  Mount,  Nevada,  150 ;  its  silver 
mines,  150,  151. 

Davis,  Joseph  (brother  of  Jefferson  Davis), 
scheme  of,  for  negro  co-operative  labor, 
35. 

Deseret  (the  Mormon  country),  "  Land  of  the 
Bee,"  125. 

Devil's  Gate,  Nevada,  151. 

Diego  Mendoza's  discovery  of  California, 
157. 

Dirt-storm,  90. 


OO-i 


Index. 


Democracy  (see  Squatters),  colonial,  312; 
payment  of  member.?,  312;  reasons  for, 
319;  the  Catholic  party  in  power,  312; 
driven  from  office  on  the  question  of  ap- 
pointing only  Irishmen  to  the  police,  313; 
the  u'Shaughnes-cy  Government,  313; 
Victorians  mending  the  constitution,  314; 
democracy  of  Victoria  not  American  but 
English  in  tone,  314;  difference  between 
the  democracy  of  Victoria  and  New  South 
Wales,  316;  earnestness  of  colonial  democ- 
racy in  the  cause  of  education,  316;  dan- 
ger of  the  crushing  influence  of  democracy 
upon  individuality,  318  ;  no  great  party  ia 
the  colonies  at  all  like  the  great  Kepubli- 
cau  party  of  America,  319;  the  future  of 
Australian  democracy,  319;  tendency  of 
the  women  to  cling  to  the  old  '•  colonial 
court"  society,  319;  democratic  principles 
iu  Australia,  320. 

Denver,  letter  from,  SG;  Vigilance  Commit- 
tees in,  178. 

Dependencies,  English,  535;  Abyssinian  war, 
535 ;  free  trade  forced  on  China  and  Japan, 
535;  future  policy  of  England  and  Ameri- 
ca with  respect  to  China,  530  ;  profit  and 
loss  of  our  dependencies,  53T;  the  Dutch 
system,  537;  deliberately  rejected  by  the 
English  people,  537;  cost  of  several  depen- 
dencies, 537  ;  India's  part  in  the  Abysin- 
nian  war,  537  ;  the  retention  of  dependen- 
cies and  colonies  on  different  grounds,  537 ; 
India  as  a  nursery  of  warriors  and  states- 
men, 5jS;  the  advantage  to  a  nation  of 
having  world-wide  interests  to  govern, 
53S;  seizure  of  Eerim,  53S  ;  amusing  in- 
cident of,  538. 

Dixon,  Mr.  llepworth,  meeting  with,  at  St. 
Louis,  SI ;  name  in  Nebraska,  104 ;  part- 
ing from  the  author,  134. 

Drama,  Chinese,  peculiarity  of,  ISO. 

Dutch  element  of  population  gone  from  New 
York,  41. 

Dutch  Gap,  21. 


E. 


East,  the,  first  view  of,  372. 

Education,  "godless,"  in  Australia,  313; 
earnestness  of  the  colonial  democracy  in  the 
cause  of,  316,  317 ;  the  Australian  as  com- 
pared with  the  English  view  of  the  real 
use  of,  317;  illiterate  men  in  the  colonies 
striving  to  educate  their  children,  317. 

El  Dorado,  156-159. 

Emerson,  his  opinion  of  the  vitality  of  Mor- 
monism,  133. 

Emigrants,  classes  of,  that  do  not  succeed, 
and  that  do,  290;  tendency  to  hang  about 
great  towns  in  America  and  Australia,  29!. 

English,  old,  names  in  the  Southern  States 
of  America,  25,  26;  and  families,  26;  in 
Boston,  51;  flowers  at  the  New  Zealand 
diggings,  236;  officers  at  the  New  Zealand 
diggings,  241. 

English  race,  pushing  on  toward  the  setting 
sun,  19S  (see  Race  in  America);  in  the 
struggle  of  races,  545;  extent  of  districts 
rilled  by  the  English  race,  545;  the  Saxon 
has  outstripped  the  Muscovite,  545 ;  alli- 
ance on  equal  terms  with  America,  545; 
prospects  of  the  race  as  a  whole,  515, 


Episcopalian  Church  iu  America,  flourishing, 

1^0. 


E. 


Ff.nian  Brothers,  the,  213  ;  meetings  of,  in 
New  York,  Chicago,  and  Canada,  213 ; 
Irish  support  of,  213;  nature  of  Irish  an- 
tipathy to  Great  Britain,  213;  its  probable 
effect,  213  ;  the  Irish  at  home  not  Fenians 
iu  the  American  sense,  214;  land  laws  in 
Ireland,  214;  unsatisfactory  position  of 
Irishmen  in  America,  214;  Fenian  agree- 
ment to  drop  the  word  "English"  as  up- 
plied  to  language,  and  to  use  only  the  term 
"American,"  215;  opinion  of  Americans 
respecting  Fenianism,  '215;  the  raid  into 
Canada  and  the  St.  Alban's  raid,  216;  Fe- 
nian power  owing  to  the  anti-English  feel- 
ing of  the  Democratic  party  and  the  Ala- 
bama claims,  216. 

Flies,  the  two,  273  ;  probable  cause  of  English 
natural  productions  supplanting  the  Maori 
ones  in  New  Zealand,  273-274 ;  the  English 
fly  beats  down  and  will  exterminate  the  Ma- 
ori fly,  274 ;  suitability  of  the  New  Zealand 
soil  and  climate  for  English  productions — 
men,  eeeds,  and  insect-genus,  274;  the 
Maori  differs  from  other  aboriginal  races — 
he  farms,  owns  villages  and  ships,  is  a  good 
rider,  mechanic,  soldier,  sailor,  and  trader, 
yet  he  is  passing  away  like  the  native  fly, 
275 :  the  descendants  of  Captain  Cook's 
pigs,  276;  conduct  of  the  British  Govern- 
ment toward  the  Maorics,  276,  277  (see 
Thompson,  William);  half-breeds,  278;  a 
chance  for  the  Maories  surviving  by  mis- 
cegenation, 27S ;  uncliastity  of  the  Maori 
unmarried  women,  ''Christian  as  will  aa 
heathen,"  279  (see  also  Pacific). 

Florida,  banana  in,  33. 

Florida,  privateer,  under  water,  20. 

Forged  notes,  novel  agreement  of  Colorado 
and  Nevada  people  respecting,  149. 

Freedom  and  slavery,  their  contrary  effects, 
-4. 

Free  labor  and  slave  labor,  29,  30. 

Freemasonry  of  travel,  143. 

Freemont,  the  Pathfinder,  his  report  of  Utah, 
110;  his  conquest  in  the  West,  181. 

French,  attempt  of,  to  precede  ns  in  New 
Zealand  and  Australia,  351;  possessions 
in  India,  406;  the  Island  of  l'erini,  638; 
France  in  the  East,  539;  state  of  Egypt, 
540,  541  ;  preponderance  of  French  influ- 
ence there,  541 ;  the  Suez  Canal,  541 ;  its 
commercial  success  not  of  first  importance 
to  the  French  Government,  542;  French 
power  played  off  by  the  King  of  Egypt 
against  England  and  Russia,  542 ;  pros- 
pects of  the  canal,  543;  and  use  to  En- 
gland, 543;  proposed  neutralization  of 
Egypt,  543 ;  French  aims  in  Egypt,  B43 ; 
Comtist  theories,  513;  nationalism  and  cos- 
mopolitanism, 543;  the  work  of  England 
as  distinguished  from  that  of  France,  544. 


Gat.i.e  (sec  Point  dn  Galle). 
Gecloug  (see  Victorian  Ports). 


Index. 


553 


Germans,  justice-loving,  their  descendants  in 
West,  in  America,  17.r>;  their  influence  ou 
the  religious  thought  of  America,  226. 

Gold  and  silver  diggers,  contempt  of  the 
firmer  for  the  latter,  151. 

Gold,  discovery  of,  in  any  part  of  the  world 
certain  to  be  followed  by  English  Goveru- 
nieut  there,    ??. 

Golden  City,  179;  seeing  the  "  lions"  there, 
179;  subterranean  forces,  182;  "What 
Cheer  House,"  182;  mint-juleps,  182;  do- 
mestlc  servants,  their  enviable  position, 
183;  h.tel  life,  1S2,  183;  excellency  of  cli- 
mate, 1S4;  gayety  of  the  people,  ls4;  mix- 
ed population,  185,  ISO. 

Golden  Gate,  the  gap  in  the  Contra  Costa 
range  of  mountains  by  which  the  Pacific 
breeze  rushes  on  San  Francisco,  18  I;  ben- 
eflciafeff 'Cta  of  the  breez?,  185;  curious 
faets  connected  with  it,  IS  . 

Gilpin,  Governor,  104,  l'J6. 

Grand  Plateau,  overtaken  o:i,  by  a  company 
of  "  ovei  landers,"  140;  compliments  in  the 
daiert,  140. 

Grant,  General,  21 ;  the  secret  of  his  success, 
24. 

Great  Salt  Lake  City,  138  ;  the  lake  gradu- 
ally sinking,  139;  its  extent,  155. 

Greeley,  Horace,  139-155. 

Guatemala,  220. 


II. 


IIanotown,  where  Lynch  law  was  inaugura- 
ted, 160. 

Ilauk  Monk's  "piece,"  153;  a  reckless  drive, 
15G. 

Harvard  College  (Cambridge,  Mass.),  foun- 
dation of,  47;  the  Harvard  family,  48;  de- 
fects of  the  college,  43 ;  its  need  of  a  ten 
days'  revolution,  48 ;  hope  of  reform,  49 ; 
new  constitution,  49 ;  out-door  sports,  49, 
51;  "Alumni  celebration,"  51;  New  En- 
gland love  for,  52 ;  old  students,  52 ;  past 
reform,  52 ;  its  noble  bands  of  volunteers 
for  the  war,  53 ;  classic  repose  of  the  town, 
53. 

Heights,  the,  among  the  "Nameless  Alps" 
of  Western  America,  supper  ou,  at  3  A.M., 
139. 

Himalayan  yak,  its  suitability  for  the  desert, 
106. 

Hobarton  (see  Tasmania). 

H'dson,  Captain,  his  shooting  down  the  sons 
of  the  last  Mogul  Emperor,  432. 

Hokitika  and  the  Buller — new  gold-fields  of 
the  colony,  233  ;  nature  of  the  voyage  from 
Melbourne  to  Hokitika,  235;  a  fine  sun- 
rise, 235;  the  bar,  235;  a  "toss"  for  a 
newspaper,  23G  ;  the  hotel,  23!;  English 
flowers  among  the  diggers,  23G ;  the  dig- 
gings, 230  ;  soil  and  climate  of,  237;  polit- 
ical economy  on  board  the  steamer,  237  ; 
rapid  rise  of  Hokitika,  237  ;  its  excellent 
loads,  233 ;  the  product  of  convict  labor, 
238;  the  term  '■convict"  made  to  include 
persons  committed  for  the  smallest  offenses, 
233,  239;  bush-rangers,  239 ;  New  Zealand 
Thugs,  239;  a  favorite  amusement  at  the 
diggings,  241;  the  new  road  from  Hokiti- 
ka, '341 ;  rivalry  between  the  towu  and  the 
religious  settlements,  244. 


Homestead  Act  (United  States),  frauds  en, 
177. 

Hotel  life  in  America,  its  effect  on  women  and 
children,  182, 188 ;  profligacy  and  assur- 
ance of  Young  America,  182,  1S3. 

Hudson  liay  Company,  the  blight  of  its  mo- 
nopoly, 60-42  ;  impossibility  of  the  Com- 
pany resisting  American  immigration,  03. 

Hunting-party,  a,  lost,  87. 

Hydrabad  (see  India — Sciude). 


India,  spelling  of  native  names,  3S6. 

,  Benares,  early  morning  in.  409  ;   the 

Hindoo  as  a  babbler,  410  ;  Temple  of  Sa- 
cred Monkeys,  410 ;  Queen's  College  for 
native  Students,  410;  observatory  of  Jai 
Singh,  and  the  Golden  Temple,  410; 
streets  of  Benares,  411  ;  banks  of  the  Gan- 
ges, 411;  scenery,  411;  ornamentation  of 
pavilions,  411 ;  taste  in  painting,  412  ;  peo- 
ple taken  to  the  banks  of  the  Ganges  to 
die,  412;  similar  customs  among  the  Cin- 
ghalese  and  Maories,  413 ;  immorality  of  the 
holy  city,  413;  conservatism  of  the  Orien- 
tal mind,  413  ;  fewness  of  Europeans  in  In- 
dia, 413;  ahot  white  fog,  413;  demoraliza- 
tion of  English  soldiers,  414  ;  brandy-and- 
soda-water,  414  ;  Benares  a  type  of  India, 
415;  position  of  missionaries  in,  415. 

,  Bombay,  508 ;  vegetation,  508 ;  har- 
bor of,  509;  weak  defenses  of,  509  ;  rapid 
rise  of,  owing  to  the  cotton  -  trade,  509, 
510  ;  hard  work  in  the  mercantile  houses, 

510  ;  Scotchmen  in  Bombay,  511 ;  compen- 
sations of  Bombay  life,  511 ;    the  bazar, 

511  ;  the  Parsees,  511  ;  their  religion  and 
culture,  512;  the  stage  as  a  means  of  sat- 
irizing English  foibles,  512 ;  a  Parsee  mar- 
riage, 513;  Caves  of  Elephanta,  513  ;  bust 
of  the  Hindoo  Trinity,  513;  its  grandeur, 
513. 

,  Calcutta  to  Benares,  etc.  405;  Chan- 

dernagore,  405;   French  possessions,  406; 


railway  in  Oriental  dress,  400;  Monghyr 
Hills,  406;  the  Ganges,  first  view  of  it, 
407;  scenery,  407;  over  the  plains,  407; 
Patna,  Oriental  independence  of  railway 
time-tables,  407 ;  taking  tickets  In  good 
time,  4  IS  ;  working  of  the  railways,  40S  ; 
effect  of  railways  ou  the  state  of  the  coun- 
try, 408;  on  caste,  408,  409;  destruction 
of  forests,  409  ;  Mogul  Serai,  the  junction 
for  Benares,  409  (see  Benares). 

,  Colonization   of,  445 ;    attempts  at, 

made  in  six  districts,  440 ;  Cashmere  the 
best  for  European  settlers,  446 ;  civilians 
and  rulers  of  Iudia  jealous  of  settlers,  446, 
417;  dread  of  "low-caste"  Englishmen, 
447;  holding  of  landed  estates  by  English- 
men in  Iudia,  447 ;  English  planters  would 
assist  to  give  n  healthy  tone  to  the  social 
system,  418;  indigo-plantations  in  Bengal, 
419  ;  two  securities  against  the  further 
degradation  of  India,  449. 

,  English  learning  in,  51S;  ignorance 

of  the  people,  519  ;  their  high  art  a  relic  of 
a  by-gone  age,  519 ;  apparent  rapid  de- 
dine  since  the  English  arrived  in  India, 
519 ;  humiliation  of  the  ruling  classes  of 


A  2 


554 


Index. 


the  country,  520 ;  what  should  be  the  char- 
acter of  the  government  of  such  a  people, 
521  ;  "India  for  the  Indians,"  the  mean- 
ing of  the  cry,  521  ;  necessary  radical  re- 
forms, 521;  trivial  character  of  those  in- 
troduced a  few  years  ago,  521 ;  importance 
of  naturalizing  the  English  language  in 
India,  521  ;  naturalization  of  the  Spanish 
language  in  America,  522;  England's 
want  of  success  in  that  particular,  522  ;  I 
early  abolition  of  slavery  probably  one 
cause  of  it,  522  ;  our  system  of  government 
a  dear  one,  523  ;  servile  condition  of  native 
women,  5_'3;  false  swearing,  523;  small 
amount  of  money  spent  in  encouraging 
learning,  524. 

India,  England  in  the  East  different  from  the 
England  at  home,  525,  526;  trial  by  jury 
an  1  law  courts,  520;  the  old-school  Hin- 
doos and  the  freethinkers  both  opposed  to 
us,  520,  527;  superiority  of  Akbar's  pol- 
icy,  527 ;  employment  of  natives  in  higher 
offices,  527,  52S ;  a  Mahommedan  prot-st 
against  our  policy,  528  ;  levelling  tendency 
of  our  competitive  examinations,  528  ;  ha- 
tred to  English  rule,  the  hatred  that  East- 
erns always  have  to  their  masters,  5-8  ; 
not  a  wish  for  s  df-government,  523 ;  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race  in  possession  of  the  only 
homes  of  freedom  known  at  the  present, 
time,  530;  freedom  not  understood  by  the 
Hindoo-',  530  ;  consequences  of  our  leaving 
India,  531 ;  prospects  of  our  government 
there,  531 ;  Anglo-Indian  opposition  to  gov- 
ernment from  London,  532,  533  ;  the  crea- 
tion of  new  governments,  533  ;  fundament- 
al question  whether  we  wish  to  hold  India 
for  our  prestige  merely,  or»in  the  interest 
of  the  people  of  Ilindostan,  534. 

,  Gazette,  451 ;  value  and  variety  of 

contents  of,  451—153;  evidence  with  respect 
to  "•ghaut-murder,"  454;  evidence  as  to 
polyandry  and  polygyny,  in  India,  455- 
45S. 

,   Lahore,    467 ;   appearance  of,  407 ; 

suburb  of  tombs,  467;  Cabool  Gate,  467 ; 
English  characteristics  of  Lahore,  468 ; 
newspapers  of,  468;  the  rulers  of  Lahore, 
403. 

. -,  Madras  to  Calcutta,  402 ;  the  Mas- 

sullali  boat,  402;  sighting  the  Temple  of 
Juggcrnauth,  403;  the  lloogly,  403;  scen- 
ery on,  403  ;  palace  of  the  ex-King  of  Oude, 
4  3  ;  extravagance  and  debauchery  of  the 
ex-king,  403;  apprehension  of  one  of  his 
wives  for  assisting  in,  403;  general  immo- 
rality of  wealthy  natives  in  Calcutta,  4  4; 
character  of  the  Indian  Government,  and 
its  inllueiice  on  the  popular  life,  404;  Gov- 
ernment-house, and  Calcutta  building-, 
404;  hospitality  of  great  mercantile  hous- 
es, 404,  405;  mixed  population  of  Calcutta, 
405. 

-,  Mohammedan  cities  of,  425;  Allaha- 


bad, 425  ;  Cawnpore,  420  ;  Lucknow,  426 ; 
beauty  of  Lucknow,  420;  stories  of  the 
mutiny,  426,  427 ;  ill-treatment  of  natives 
by  the  English,  427;  a  notice  in  hotels, 
427;  Anglo-Indian  jokes,  428;  looting, 
42S;  contempt  for  native  lives,  42S;  offi- 
cers and  natives,  429  ;  English  cruelties  in 
Oude,  420;    the  Residency   at  Lucknow, 


429 ;  a  war,  not  a  rebellion,  in  Oude,  480; 
rapid  repair  of  the  wrecks  of  the  rebellion, 
430 ;  Agra,  430 ;  the  Taj  Mahal  and  Pearl 
of  Mosques,  430-432 ;  Akhar's  draught- 
board and  pieces,  431 ;  great  works  of  the 
Mogul  conquerors,  432;  contrast  of  Mo- 
hammedan great  cities  and  those  of  the 
three  Presidencies,  432  ;  changes  in  Delhi, 
433. 

India,  Mohammedan  Mohurrum,  celebrated 
at  Poonah,  513 ;  the  ascent  to  Poonali,  514; 
the  procession,  515,  516;  elegance  and 
grace  of  the  females  of  Poonah.  510;  tha 
procession  joined  in  by  the  Hindoos  and 
Christians  as  well  as  Mohammedans,  516, 
517;  drunken  British  soldiers,  517  ;  Indian 
Mohammedans,  their  small  number  and 
Hindoo  feelings,  41S. 

,  Native  States,  484;  resemblance  of 

the  people  of,  to  Gaelic  races,  484  ;  need 
of  irrigation  in  country,  4S  t,  485 ;  Moultan, 
4S5;  rail  and  river,  4S5;  State  of  Bhawul- 
pore,  4S5;  talk  of  annexation  of,  4s<;  ; 
demoralization,  4SG ;  degeneracy  of  ruling 
families,  4S7  ;  British  or  native  rule,  487  ; 
reasons  for  believing  that  the  people  know 
they  are  well  off  under  British  rule,  483 ; 
merchants  and  towns-people  our  friends, 
4SS;  danger  of  interfering  with  native 
customs,  483 ;  the  Nepaulese  during  tho 
mutiny,  480  ;  the  Stale  of  Cashmere,  4S9  ; 
its  creation  as  a  State,  489 ;  grounds  for 
re-purchase  or  annexation,  48.',  490;  the 
Nizam,  Scindia,  Guicodar  of  Baroda,  and 
Holkar,  400  ;  origin  of  present  ruling  fam- 
ilies, 491 ;  effect  of  shutting  out  the  natives 
from  the  higher  branches  of  the  English 
service,  491,  492;  present  attitude  of  tho 
natives  one  of  indifference  and  neutrality, 
402,  403;  the  question  of  future  annex- 
ation, 493. 

,  our  Army,  470  ;  the  Sikhs,  470 ;  ques. 


tiouable  morality  of  the  present  system  of, 
471 ;  Russia  our  only  possible  enemy  from 
without,  472;  her  weakness  as  against  In- 
dia, 472  ;  taxation  of  the  poorest  country  in 
the  world  for  so  large  an  army,  473 ;  our 
duty  to  reduce  the  army,  473  ;  employment 
of  Sikhs  out  of  India,  473  ;  British  officers, 
474 ;  danger  to  English  liberties  from  so 
large  an  army  in  India,  474. 

-,  overland    routes,   501 ;    Kurrachee, 


character  of,  501,  502  ;  chokedars,  502;  u 
shibboleth  for  excluding  natives  from  the 
lines,  502;  the  harbor  of  Kurrachee,  503 ; 
Kurrachee  the  direct  route  from  Bombay, 
by  the  Euphrates  Valley  and  Constantino- 
ple, to  London,  503;  the  earliest  known 
overland  route,  504;  interest  of  a  return  of 
trade  to  the  Gulf  route,  504,505;  difficul- 
ties in  the  way  of,  505-507;  Scindeo  chief 
tains,  508. 

,  Russian  approach  to,  475;  at  Bokha- 
ra, 475 ;  advice  from  different  quarters  as 
to  the  best  means  for  dealing  with,  475- 
477;  opinion  of  a  Syrian  Pacha  as  to  En- 
gland's proper  course  and  interest  in  oppo- 
sition to  Russia,  477-479  ;  his  view  of  on? 
relation  to  Turkey  and  Egypt,  477-480; 
differences  of  Moslem  races,  4S0;  opinion 
of  old  Indians  that  Indian  policy  should 
rule  the  policy  of  the  nation,  4>1 ;  advance 


Index. 


OiX> 


of  Russia  watched  by  the  natives  481 ;  ad- 
vantages to  India  of  English  government, 
if  we  can  raise  up  a  people  that  will  sup- 
port our  rule,  432,  4S3. 

India,  Simla,  43:i;  a  night  ride  up  the  hills 
to,  434;  languages  of  India,  435;  dawk- 
travelling,  435;  villages  on  the  way,  43G ; 
aristocracy  of  color,  430 ;  English  haughti- 
ness, 43(J;  Indian  plains,  437 ;  ruins,  437  ; 
wheat  harvest,  437  ;  female  reapers,  437; 
jampan-riding,  4:S7  ;  servants,  unpleasaut 
number  of,  43S,  43'J  ;  thirty-five  required 
for  one  small  family  in  Simla,  439;  cheap- 
ness of  labor,  439,  440 ;  English  soldiers, 
t he  possibility  of  keeping  all  at  hill  sta- 
tions, 441 ;  Btory-telling  in  the  East,  441  ; 
entry  to  Simla,  442:  the  viceroy's  chil- 
dren, 442;  climate,  443 ;  suitability  of  Sim- 
la as  a  refuge  of  the  Indian  Government 
from  Calcutta  heat,  443 ;  the  question  of 
new  "governorship-,"  443;  Calcutta,  dis- 
advantages of,  as  capital,  444;  future  cap- 
ital of  India,  444,  445;  a  sunrise  scene  from 
Simla,  445;  a  fair  at  Simla,  450. 

— — ,  Seinde,  493;  the  Indus  Valley  a  part 
nf  the  great  Sahara,  4'.)4;  sailing  on  the 
Indus,  495,  490 ;  a  Persian's  prayer  on 
shipboard,  490,  4.17  ;  shallowness  of  the 
river,  437 ;  necessity  of  a  safe  and  speedy 
road  up  the  valley,  497;  neglect  of  rail- 
w.iys  in  India,  497;  need  and  value  of 
them,  498;  early  trade  between  China  and 
Hindostan,  498  ;  Sukkur,  499 ;  native  fish- 
ing, 499;  Hydrabad,  500;  Kurrachee,  500 
(see  Overland  Routes). 

-,  Umritsur,  45S ;  Hindoo   sacred  fair, 


or  camp-meeting,  458  ;  Sikh  pilgrims  on 
the  way  from,  45S ;  cholera  stricken,  459  ; 
a  fearful  march,  459  ;  nature  of  the  great 
gathering,  459,  400  ;  a  dust-storm,  ,00  ; 
Anglo-Indian  engineering.  401 ;  neglect  of 
roads,  401;  the  Grand  Trunk  Railway, 
401 ;  Umritsur,  beauty  of,  402 ;  fruits,  fo- 
liage, etc.  402;  its  famous  roses,  402  ;  the 
iittar-of-roses,  402  ;  Cashmere  shawl  man- 
ufacture, 409;  cost  of,  400;  material,  403 ; 
the  bazar,  403;  the  Sikhs,  Magyar  appear- 
ance of,  403;  Indian  and  English  manu- 
factures, 464;  ornament,  Hindoo  taste  with 
respect  to,  405 ;  the  spiritual  capital  of  the 
Sikhs,  405 ;  a  Sikh  revival,  4G0 ;  its  possi- 
ble consequences,  4GG. 

-,  East,  trunk  railway  of,  SO. 


ladian  customs  (see  Caste). 

Seas,  the,  3S6,  3S7. 

Indians  of  the  American  Plains,  87;  stations 
robbed  by,  SS;  a  formal  Indian  warning  to 
the  white  men,  88;  a  half-breed  interpre- 
ter, S3;  treaties  with  the,  89;  opposition 
of,  to  the  Pacific  Railway,  S'J  ;  the  chief, 
"  Spotted  Dog,"  89  ;  treatment  of  squaws, 
93  ;  and  general  unseemliness,  93  ;  coming 
to  town  to  be  painted,  95;  inferiority  to 
the  Indians  of  the  Eastern  States,  96;  cus- 
toms similar  to  those  of  the  Maories,  96; 
degradation  of  the  Indian,  96;  rapid  ex- 
termination of,  97 ;  tendency,  when  ap- 
parently civilized,  to  return  to  barbarism, 
93 ;  rough-and-ready  attempts  by  the  En- 
glish to  civilize,  98;  conservative  charae- 
t  ■]•  of  the  Indian,  99 ;  American  treaty 
with,  99;  the  ladian  receding  before  the 


English  race,  but  victorious  over  the  Span- 
iards, 100;  open  attempts  to  exterminate 
by  the  Coloradan  Government,  100 ;  gangs 
of  Indians  working  by  proxy  on  the  rail- 
way,  159;  Digger  Indians,  159;  Red  Indian 
supremacy  in  Mexico,  202,  203. 
Irish  in  America,  competition  with  the  negro, 
29  ;  in  New  York,  displacing  the  New  1  n 
glanders,  42,  43 ;  danger  to  America,  4t; 
corruption  of,  in  New  York,  44  ;  possibility 
of  their  retaining  their  hold  of  the  Atlantic 
cities,  200  (see  Eeuinu  Brothers) ;  Irishmen 
not  well  off  in  America,  214  ;  Belfast  names 
in  higher  esteem  than  Cork  ones,  215;  the 
Irish  remaining  in  towns,  and  losing  their 
attachment  to  the  soil.  215;  number  of, 
sent  to  jail  in  America,  215;  an  Irish  opin- 
ion of  the  thermometer,  307;  Irish  party 
in  office  in  Victoria,  313  ;  appointment  of 
Irishmen  to  all  police  offices,  313  ;  checks 
on  Irish  immigration  to  the  colonies,  329- 
332;  work-house  girls  sent  to  the  colonies, 
353,  300. 


Jaffa,  colony  founded  there  by  New  En- 
glanders,  50. 

Jamaica,  homilies  on  the  condition  of,  by 
Southern  planters,  31. 

Japan,  its  probable  great  future,  280,  2S1. 

Jenny  Lind,  the  hall  where  she  sang  on  first 
landing  in  America,  41. 

Jockey  Club,  Sydney,  meeting  of  (see  Syd- 
ney). 

Johnson,  President,  absurdity  of  his  policy, 
39. 


K. 


Kandy  (Ceylon),  the  highland  kingdom,  and 
one  of  the  holiest  of  Buddhist  towns,  ::'.  6  ; 
dress  and  appearance  of  the  people,  3!  7 ; 
the  Upper  Town  one  great  garden,  397 ; 
tooth  of  Buddha,  397;  the  coffee  district, 
397;  Government  Botanical  Gardens — me- 
dicinal plants,  397  ;  importance  of  the  cof- 
fee-trade to  Ceylon,  397;  want  of  capital 
in,  39S ;  Dutch  system  of  labor,  398 ;  in 
Java,  398  ;  Dutch  Government  jobbery, 
39S;  immorality  of,  399,  400;  Ceylon  pe- 
titions for  self-government,  400;  the  mean- 
ing of  the  term,  400;  small  number  of 
whites  in  the  country,  400,  401 ;  mountain 
scenery,  401 ;  trees  and  foliage,  401. 

Kansas,  emancipation  of  women  in,  etc.  09, 
74;  parallel  lines  of  railway  in,  SO;  Ne- 
braska opinion  of  Kansas,  SI ;  female  suf- 
frage in,  the  opposite  pole  to  Utah  polyg- 
amy, 116;  evasion  of  the  Homestead  Act 
in,  177. 

Kimball,  Heber,  Mormon,  118. 

King  George's  Sound  (see  Convicts). 

Kit  Carson,  152. 

Kurrachee  (see  India — Overland  Route). 


Laieor  in   Australia,  328  ;    great  power  of 

|      working-men    in   Australia,  as    compared 

with,  in  the  United  States,  32S;  the  real 


55G 


Index. 


grievance  of  tlie  working-classes  through- 
nut  the  world,  32S;  laws  by  workmen  in 
the  colonies,  and  in  those  parts  of  America 
where  they  have  power,  to  meet  the  want, 
328,  329;  opposition  of  the  Sydney  work- 
men to  both  immigration  and  transporta- 
tion, 32!) ;  defense  of  the  labor  laws,  329- 
;:::i  ;  English  Factory  Act,  a  Btep  which 
diminished  the  powers  of  production,  331 ; 
Know-not hingism  in  America  a  protest 
against  the  exaggerations  of  free  trade, 
331;  proposals  to  introduce  cheap  labor, 
332;  the  fundamental  basis  of  the  labor 
question,  332,  333  ;onr  recent  ridicule  of  the 
Chinese  exclusi  veness,  333 ;  our  present  op- 
position to  Chinese  immigration,  334;  the 
Chinese  pushing  to  tlie  front  whenever  they 
have  an  opportunity,  334;  the  colonial  la- 
bor laws  not  unlike  those  of  a  trade-union, 
331;  the  oil  relation  between  master  and 
servant  dying  out,  335 ;  new  aspect  of  la- 
bor in  accordance  with  democratic  princi- 
ples, 335;  co-operative  labor  supplanting 
the  Middle-age  system,  335;  industrial 
partnerships  a  return  to  the  earliest  and 
noblest  forms  of  labor,  330. 

Lahore  (see  India — Lahore'. 

Land  tenure  in  Australia  (see  Squatters  and 
Democracy). 

Latin  Church,  the,  in  America,  43. 

. Empire  in  America,  201  ;  its  virtual 

downfall,  2U1. 

Latinization,  the  apparent,  of  the  English  in 
America,  221. 

Launceston  (see  Tasmania). 

Lawrence,  St.,  the,  57;  Laurentian  range  of 
mountains,  53. 

Louisiana,  banana  in,  33. 

Lucknow  (see  India — Mohammedan  Cities). 

Lynch  law,  where  inaugurated,  160  ;  Vigi- 
lance Committees,  107  ;  gieat  need  for,  in 
California,  in  1SJS,  107;  influx  of  English 
convicts  and  desperadoes  from  all  parts, 
107,163;  first  attempted  action  on  the  part 
of  the  people  for  their  own  protection,  168; 
united  attempt,  101) ;  trial  by  Lynch  law, 
109, 1  TO;  Vigilance  Committee  formed,  169; 
its  regular  organization,  and  prompt  ac- 
tion, 170;  police  show  of  resistance  to, 
170  ;  but  warned  away,  170;  the  trial,  17'), 
and  execution,  171 ;  full  public  account  of 
the  circumstances,  171 ;  trial  and  execution 
indorsed  by  the  citizens  in  public  meeting, 
171;  struggle  with  authority — the  Com- 
mittee victorious,  172;  sending  the  con- 
victs back  to  Australia,  172  ;  a  fearful  year 
(1355),  172;  resolute  action  of  the  people, 
172-174;  end  of  the  work,  174;  necessity 
for  the  action,  174  ;  somewhat  different  ac- 
tion in  Melbourne  for  the  same  purpose, 
174;  public  spirit  of  the  people,  175;  dc- 
acen  [ants  of  the  justice-loving  Germans, 
175;  two  memorable  Lynch-law  tre  ■*,  178  ; 
Vigilance  Committees  in  Denver,  Leaven- 
worth, etc.  178,  119. 


M. 

Maine  Liquor  Law,  likelihool  of  being  the 
first  cause  of  the  reaction  against  the  now 
triumphant  Radical',  209. 


Malthusianism  rejected  in  America,  101. 
Maori  (see  Race) :  question  of  Maories  being 
native-  of  tile  New  Zealand  soil,  '.MO;  legend 

of  their  flight  to  New  Zealand,  246;  Poly- 
nesian names  in  their  language,  247  ;  tra- 
ditional account  of  the  cradle  of  race, '- 17  ; 
resemblance  between,  and  the  Red  Indians 
of  America,  248,  243  ;  similarity  of  religious 
rites  and  social  customs  of, 249  ;  the  -Malay 
race  in  the  Pacific,  250 ;  the  most  widely 
scattered  of  all  the  nations  of  the  world  be- 
fore the  English,  250;  tlie  Maories,  Malays, 
'-50 ;  Malay  breach  of  a  law  of  nature  in 
going  to  New  Zealand,  25:)  ;  paying  the 
penalty  in  extinction,  250  ;  Parewanui  Pah, 
251;  a  Maori  song,  251;  meeting  of  the 
tribes  to  discuss  with  the  white  man  a 
great  question  of  the  right  to  territory,  252  ; 
curious  idea  of  the  Maories  as  to  the  title 
of  land,  252;  a  summons  to  the  council, 
253;  vigorous  speeches  of  the  chiefs,  253, 
254;  the  representative  of  the  queen  (Dr. 
Featherston)  communicating  with  the 
chiefs,  255;  adjournment  for  luncheon,  255 ; 
the  Maori  belles,  255;  views  of  the  chiefs 
with  respect  to  Dr.  Featherston's  decision, 
250  ;  business  of  the  council  resumed,  257  ; 
oratorical  abuse,  257  ;  breaking-lip  of  the 
council,  257;  its  singular  resemblance  to 
the  Greek  Council  as  described  by  Homer, 
257,  25S;  alarming  news  of  guns  being  sent 
for,  25S;  another  general  meeting  of  the 
tribes,  259  ;  Maori  names,  259  ;  the  queen's 
flag  pulled  down,  259  ;  Dr.  I  eathers ton's 
refusal  to  attend  any  debate  till  the  flag  is 
re-hoisted  259;  an  into  e-ting  voyage  in  an. 
English  ship  for  c  .nnibul  purposes, 259 ;  the 
captain's  compensation  fir  the  use  of  his  ' 
ship,  259;  Maori  I'ahce-song,  200;  sketch 
ing  the  Maories,  200;  native  tombs,  261; 
apology  for  the  pulling  down  of  the  flag, 
201;  the  deed  of  land  sale,  202 ;  lt  eternal 
friendship"  between  the  tribes,  202;  the 
money  sent  for  by  Dr.  Featherston,  202; 
misgivings  and  grief  of  the  Maories,  202; 
their  song  of  lamentation,  202;  the  money 
paid,  863;  grand  celebration,  203, 204;  ef- 
fect of  a  war-dance  on  Lord  Durham's  set- 
tlers (in  1837),  205;  specimens  of  native  or- 
atory— noble  speech  of  the  chief  Ilonia,  •205, 
200;  a  long  ramble  in  New  Zealand,  207; 
Maori  Christianity,  its  hollowness,  207 ; 
baptized  out  of  the  Church,  207  ;  their 
Church  of  Englandism  a  failure,  207;  in 
spits  of  the  earnestness  and  devotion  of 
missionaries,  20S ;  the  great  outbreak,  208; 
deserting  the  mission-station  for  the  bush, 
20s ;  a  question — pork,  beef,  or  man  for 
food,  2GS;  the  Maori  reply,  20M;  rapid 
spread  of  Christianity  among,  when  first, 
presented,  208 ;  the  native  religion  a  vague 
polytheism,  269;  no  caste  among  the  Ma- 
ories, 269 ;  reverence  for  hisrh-born  women, 
270 ;  influence  of  women,  270 ;  delicacy  of 
the  men  toward,  270;  making  it  possible 
for  an  honest  Englishman  to  respect  or  love 
an  honest  Maori,  271 :  Maori  superiority  to 
other  native  races  in  savage  lands,  271; 
noble  Maori  trait  of  "proclaiming"  a  war 
district,  and  never  touching  an  enemy, 
however  defenseless,  when  found  elsewhere, 
271 ;  royal  ideas  of  money,  271  (see  Thomp- 


Index, 


557 


son,  William,  the  Maori  king-maker);  Ma- 
ori ability  in  war, '/T2, 273 ;  their  fondness 
for  horses,  and  skill  as  riders,  273;  their 
love  for  the  sea,  and  possession  of  vessels 
on  it,  273;  good  deep-sea  fishermen,  273 ; 
and  draught -players,  273  ;  shrewd  and 
thrifty,  devoted  trieuds,  and  brave  men, 
•J7:; ;  a  .Maori  feast  and  bill  of  fare  (sec  Ap- 
pendix); their  saying,  ''We  are  gone  like 
the  moa "  (see  Flies,  the  two),  customs  of, 
413. 

Massachusetts,  progress  of,  54. 

Maximilian,  received  in  Mexico  by  white 
men,  and  conquered  by  half-breeds,  202. 

Mayflower,  and  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  37,  42. 

Mayliew,  lion.  Ira,  work  on  education,  73. 

Mean  whites,  20;  controlling  power  of  the 
South,  30. 

Melbourne  (sec  Victoria),  voyage  from  Mel- 
bourne to  llotikika,  235;  the  great  gold 
mania  in  1S48,  230;  learned  and  distin- 
guished men  at,  315;  the  Attorney-gencr- 
al,  Mr.  Iligginbotham,  315;  a  Government 
clerk's  horror  of  the  low  pedigree  of  three 
ministers  of  state,  315;  a  Colonial  Parlia- 
ment on  its  dignity,  committal  of  a  report- 
er, 315;  Ids  triumph,  310;  early  competi- 
tion of  Melbourne  and  Geelong.  339. 

Mexican  saddl  •,  peculiarity  of,  187. 

Mexico,  coasting  to,  200;  Caps  St.  Lucas,  200  ; 
turtle  and  crocodile,  201 ;  French  army  of 
occupation,  201  ;  Acapulco,  201;  anniver- 
sary of  Marshal  Bazaine's  order  directing 
the  execution  of  all  Mexicans  found  with 
arms,  201 ;  Spanish  Mexico  becoming  Red 
Indian,  303 ;  resolution  of  the  United  States 
that  Mexico  shall  not  become  a  monarchy, 
303  ;  the  large  Catholic  population  it  would 
give  in  case  of  annexation  to  the  American 
Union,  201 ;  beauty  of  the  Mexican  Pacific 
cast,  204. 

Michigan  (see  Massachusetts),  University  of. 
OS;  Michigan  men,  and  maize,  OS;  democ- 
racy of  the  University,  GO  ;  government  of, 
70  ;  progress  of  the  Michigan  teaching  sys- 
tem, 70 :  supported  by  the  tax-payers  of 
the  State,  70 ;  jocose  reports  of  superintend- 
ents of  schools,  71,  72 ;  loyalty,  72  ;  students 
sent  to  the  war,  72 :  dislike  to  competitive 
honors,  72  ;  practical  character  of,  73  ;  ex- 
clusion of  women  from  the  medical  schools, 
74;  the  coasts  of  Michigan  great  lakes,  79. 

"Mint-juleps"  in  San  Francisco — the  old 
name  of  the  town,  Yerba  Buena,  meaning 
mint,  1S2. 

Miscegenation,  French  adoption  of,  English 
dislike  to,  07. 

Mission  Dolores,  near  San  Francisco,  one  a 
Jesuit  Mission-house,  now  partly  a  blanket 
factory  and  partly  a  church,  ISO. 

Missouri,  law  for  thepunishment  of  drunkards, 
etc.,  23S. 

Mohammedans  (3?e  India— Mohammedan  Mo- 
hurrum,  and  India — Mohammedan  Cities). 

Mohnrrum  (see  India). 

Monitors,  American,  21. 

Monroe  Doctrine,  dignified  action  of  America 
thereon,  204. 

Monroe,  Fortress,  17;  negroes  at,  17;  their 
tomb  at,  IS. 

Montreal  (see  Canada),  61. 

Mormons,  107;  a  camp  on  the  way  to  Utah, 


10S;  Coalville, the  Mormon  Newcastle,  100; 
first  sight  of  the  Promised  Land,  lo. i ;  Jor- 
dan River,  109 ;  one  great  field  of  corn  and 
wheat,  110  (see  Brigbam  Young)  ;  a  lady 
reading  to  her  daughters  in  defense  of  po- 
lygamy, 110  ;  first  night  in  Utah,  111;  arms 
at  hand,  111 ;  interest  of  the  Church  para- 
mount, 113;  the  Mormon  constitution,  113; 
penalty  for  adultery,  114;  kind  treatment 
by  the  Mormon's,  114 ;  the  representative 
of  Utah  in  Congress  a  monogamist,  2ol  ; 
anecdote  of,  115;  a  Mormon  theatre,  115; 
the  women,  115,  110;  unconscious  melan- 
choly of,  110  ;  their  perfect  freedom,  and 
opportunity  of  escaping  if  they  wished  to 
do  so,  110 ;  defense  of  polygamy,  110  ;  Utah 
polygamy  and  Kansas  female  suffrage  the 
opposite  poles  to  each  other,  110  (See  West- 
ern Editors,  Newspapers,  Stenhouse,  and 
Danites)  ;  misrepresentation  of,  117;  the- 
atre an  1  church  clothes,  HS ;  industry,  120, 
121,  125,  120  ;  natural  poorness  of  the  coun- 
try, 120;  Mormon  faith,  127;  their  belief  in 
approaching  danger  from  United  States  in- 
terference, 127;  detested  by  New  England 
and  defended  by  the  South,  12S  ;  evade  the 
law,  129;  democratic  character  of  Mormon- 
ism,  131  (see  Utah);  vitality  of  Mormon- 
ism,  133;  danger  to  it  from  the  probable 
discovery  of  gold  in  Utah,  131;  impossi- 
bility of  its  surviving  a  great  immigration; 
they  would  in  that  case  again  make  their 
way  to  new  territory,  134  (see  Nauvoo). 
Moultan  (see  India — Native  States). 


N. 


Nau  voo,  the  city  of  Joe  Smith,  224 ;  first  set- 
tlers of,  forgotten  there,  224. 

Nebraska,  81. 

Negroes,  gallantry  of,  25 ;  burial-place  of 
5000  killed  in  battle,  25;  our  English  no- 
tions of,  near  the  truth,  27;  love  of  dress, 
27  ;  planters'  view  of  freedom  of,  4S ;  re- 
ported negro  view  of  monogamy,  28 ;  need 

.  of  soap,  28;  importance  of  the  ''negro  ques- 
tion," 2S;  fallacious  evidence  against  ne- 
groes, 28  ;  driving  the  Irish  from  hotel  serv- 
ice, 29  ;  asking  for  land,  29  ;  their  po-ition 
as  slaves,  3>;  and  as  free  men,  30;  testi- 
mony of  General  Grant  to  their  excellency 
as  soldiers,  30;  a  negro  school,  31;  negro 
ability,  31 ;  superstition,  31  ;  alternative  of 
ruling  them  by  their  own  votes  or  by  force, 
34;  reading  and  writing  bases  of  suffrage 
absurd,  34;  co-operative  labor  (see  Davis), 
the  ballot  for,  37. 

Nepanlese,  the  (see  India — Native  States). 

Nevada,  its  silver  mines,  150. 

New  Englanders,  going  westward,  42 ;  in 
North  or  West,  the  real  Americans,  47 ; 
their  affection  for  Harvard  College,  5i ; 
earnest  God-fearing  principles,  55;  influ- 
ence of,  on  the  nation,  55;  their  lovable 
character,  57:  dislike  to  Mormonism,  128; 
determination  to  put  down  rowdyism  wher- 
ever they  go,  178;  wide-spread  belief  of, 
that  the  taint  of  alcoholic  poison  is  hered- 
itary, 209. 

New  Engl  m  I  States,  their  superiority  to  the 
States  of  the  South,  23  (see  Southern  States, 


55S 


Index. 


Western  States,  and  Mayflower ;  colleges 
of,  45;  population  of,  5-1 ;  debt  of  the  Union 
to  New  England,  55;  heroism  of  New  Kn- 
gland,  55;  poverty  of  tlie  soil,  55;  enter- 
prise, etc,  56. 

New  South  Wales,  convict  blood  in,  23T  (see 
Rival  Colonies) ;  terrible  depression  of  trade 
in,  at  present,  288 ;  causes  ot,  2sS;  reptiles 
in,  294  (see  Tasmania). 

New  York,  climate  of,  40;  strength  of  the 
Narrows,  40;  un-English  character,  4o; 
sea  spirit  and  busy  life,  40 ;  race,  Southern, 
41 ;  nothing  of  the  Dutch  foundation  re- 
maining, 41 ;  intensely  Irish,  42  ;  low  tone 
of  local  Legislature,  44;  denationalization 
of,  44;  neglect  of  native  colleges  and  pref- 
erence for  foreign  ones,  45:  gigantic  for- 
tunes in,  45 ;  profligacy,  petroleum,  shod- 
dy, and  unrest,  45,  40;  equality  and  affect- 
el  dislike  of  democracy,  40 ;  scenery  of,  47  ; 
democracy  of,  '212. 

New  Zealand  (see  Wellington.  Hokilika,  and 
Maori),  University  graduates  and  officers 
of  the  British  army  at  the  diggings,  240, 
241 ;  beauty  and  peculiarity  of  New  Zea- 
land scenery,  242;  the  Turamakoo,  242; 
the  Snowy  Range,  242  ;  Mount  Rolleston, 
242;  Lake  Misery,  242:  plant  peculiar  to 
the  banks  of,  242;  the  Waimakiriri  Valley, 
242;  New  Zealand  provinces,  243;  rivalry 
of,  243  (see  Otago  and  Canterbuiy)  ;  cost 
of  the  Provincial  system  and  Maori  wars, 
244  ;  consequences  of  the  division  into  two 
islands,  244 ;  rivalry  of  the  great  towns, 
245;  karaka  trees,  the  New  Zealand  sacred 
trees,  251  (-ee  llace  and  Maories) ;  New 
Zealand  scenery,  20T  (see  Flies,  the  two); 
its  chance  of  being  the  future  England  of 
the  Pacific,  28  >  (see  also  Kival  Colonies). 

Newspapers — New  Orleans  Tribune  (negro 
paper),  35;  British  Columbian,  02;  the 
^alt  Lake  Telegraph,  114;  the  Union  Ve- 
dette (Utah),  117;  contents  of  the  Vedette, 
118,  110  ;  the  great  superiority  of,  to  the 
Mormon  papers,  the  Telegrajjh  and  Deserel 
News,  119-122;  the  Denver  Gazette,  etc. 
122-124;  the  AlH  California,  and  jour- 
nalism under  difficulties,  125,  149;  Neva- 
da Union  Gazette,  14S  ;  the  San  Francisco 
Tiulletin,  173  ;  the  Spiritual  Clarion,  220; 
the  Sydney  Morning  Herald,  agents  of,  in- 
tercepting the  mail-boat,  285;  the  Mel- 
bourne Argils,  300;  the  Jiiverina  Herald, 
304;  advertisements,  paragraphs,  etc.  of, 
304-300;  committal  of  an  editor  of  the  Mel- 
bourne Argus,  310;  newspapers  in  India, 
420  ;  native  satire  of  the  English  in,  420 ; 
the  Uniritsur  Commercial  Advertiser,  421 
(see  India  Gazette) ;  the  Dacca  Drokash, 
454 ;  Indian  newspapers,  408,  409 ;  the 
Punjaub  Gazette,  409. 

Niagara  nnd  Chaudiere,  07,  08. 

Nitro-glycerine,  dread  of,  in  California,  ISO, 
1S7. 

Norfolk,  second  city  in  Virginia,  18. 

North  (America),  superiority  of  its  arms  dur- 
ing the  war,  30. 

North  and  South  in  America,  the  unvarying; 
success  of  the  former  in  any  trial  of 
strength,  78,  79. 

Norwegian  population  in  Wisconsin,  223; 
Milwaukee  a  Norwegian  town,  223;   Ca- 


nadian plan   for  a  Norwegian  colony  on 
Lake  Huron,  223. 


O. 

Ohio,  beauty  of  scenery  and  wealth  of  soil, 

Otago  (New  Zi  aland),  Presbyterian  settle- 
ment, 243,  244. 

Ottawa,  capital  of  the  New  Dominion,  G7  ;  its 
Parliament-house,  07  ;  the  Chaudiere  Falls, 
07. 

I'. 

Pacific,  the,  voyage  across,  from  Panama 
to  New  Zealand,  2.9  (see  Fitcairn  Island); 
from  Pitcairn  Island,  232:  climate  of,  278, 
270;  unfavorable  to  the  progress  of  New 
Zealand,  279;  effect  of  like  causes  else- 
where, 279;  coal  in  the,  279;  Japan,  Van- 
couver Island,  and  New  Zealand,  likely 
to  rise  to  manufacturing  greatness,  2s0 ; 
Christmas  Day  on,  282. 

Pacific  Kailroad,  growing  at  the  rate  of  two 
miles  a  day  at  one  end  and  one  mile  at  tho 
other,  75;  probable  completion  of  it  in 
ls70,  75;  inducements  to  proceed  quickly 
with  the  work,  77;  rapid  and  steady  prog- 
ress westward,  77  ;  armed  construction- 
trains,  7S ;  the  great  objects  of  the  under- 
taking, 7S  ;  Indian  opposition  to  the,  89. 

Panama,  character  of,  228 ;  animals  and 
birds  of,  282  ;  scene  at  a  railway  station, 
2S2 ;  prospects  of  Panama,  229  ;  departure 
from,  for  Wellington,  New  Zealand,  289. 

Paper-money  iu  the  Western  States  of  Amer- 
ica, 149,  150. 

Parewanui  Pah  (see  Maori). 

Parsees  (see  India — Bombay). 

Party  organization,  despotism  of,  in  America, 
210;  secret  of  party  power,  211, 

Pawnees,  02,  93. 

Petersburg,  America,  as  left  by  the  war,  22  ; 
defenses  of,  24. 

Pioneer,  a  great,  92. 

Pioneering  in  America,  80;  on  the  Plains, 87. 

Pitcairn  Island,  the  banana-trie  there,  32; 
arrival  at,  230  ;  visited  by  the  people,  230; 
'•How  do  you  do,  captain?  How's  Vic- 
toria?" 230;  descendants  of  the  Tountg 
mutineers,  230;  wish  to  submit  to  the  cap- 
tain a  case  for  arbitration,  230  ;  the  case 
stated  for  "advice,"  231  ;  its  curious  legal 
bearing,  231  ;  a  temporary  commercial 
treaty  with  the  islanders,  231 ;  inquiry  for 
English  periodicals,  231  ;  brandy  as  medi- 
cine, 231;  the  islanders  strict  teetotallers, 
231;  standing  out  from  the  bay,  232. 

Pittsburg,  dirt  of,  68. 

Placerville,  in  California,  159-1C3,  10G. 

Plains,  the,  out  on,  87  ;  a  "  squar'  meal,"  ST  ; 
weird  scene,  87  ;  great  distance  of  forts 
from  each  other,  SS  ;  sitting  revolver  in 
hand,  89;  a  million  companions  in  the  lone- 
liness, 90  ;  beauty  of,  101;  resemblance  to 
the  Tartar  Plains,  102;  vast  extent,  102  ; 
two  curses  on  the  land — want  of  water,  102, 
103;  and  locusts,  103;  feeding-ground  for 
large  flocks,  104. 

Planter  view   of  neg'o   freedom,  28;    effect 


Index. 


050 


of  slavery  on  both  master  and  slave,  31 ; 
planters  leaving  the  South,  88. 

Plutocracy  in  Australia,  307,  303  (see  Squat- 
ter). 

Point  dii  Galle  (see  Maritime  Ceylon). 

Polygamy  in  India,  465;  polyandry,  45C ;  po- 
lygny,  456-458. 

Polynesians,  Malay  origin  of,  246-C50  (-re 
Kaoa  ami  Maori);  rapid  spread  of  Chris- 
tianity among,  -OS;  the  Maori  religion  com- 
mon to  all  Polynesians,  'JO'.' ;  a  vague  poly- 
theism in  the  songs,  seeming  to  approach 
pantheism',  2G9;  difference  between  the 
Uaories  and  other  Polynesians,  269. 

Poonah  (see  the  Mohammedan  Mohurrum). 

Potomac,  40. 

Prairie-dogs,  for  food,  S3  ;  on  the  Plains,  90. 

Prairie  flowers,  93,  94. 

Protection  to  native  industry  in  the  colonies, 
320,  321  ;  the  squatters  alone  in  favor  of 
free  trade,  321  ;  defen-e  of  protection  by 
the  diggers,  322;  its  self-denying  diame- 
ter, 322 :  defended  on  different  grounds  in 
Australia  and  America,  322,  32.' ;  grand- 
eur of  the  willingness  to  sacrifice  private 
interest  that  a  nation  may  be  built  up,  323  ; 
protection  to  a  great  degree  a  revolt  against 
steam.  324;  American  defense  of,  as  a  ne- 
cessity to  a  young  nation,  324;  and  as  a  se- 
curity against  the  pauper  labor  of  Europe, 
325;  "No  America  without  protection,'' 
320  ;  eagerness  for,  in  Victoria,  327;  Amer- 
ic  in  admission  of  the  economical  argu- 
ment, but  assertion  that  political  objec- 
tions overweigh  it,  32S  ;  protection  not  the 
doctrine  of  a  eli  pie,  but  a  nation,  328.     . 

Pyramids,  the,  53  '. 


Qr/RiiEO,  terrace  at,  57 ;  change  of  scene  from 
the  States,  57  ;  strength  of  the  French  pop- 
ulation, 58;  customs  and  feelings  of  Old 
France,  5S ;  the  only  true  French  colony 
in  the  world,  guarded  by  English  troops 
against  the  inroads  of  the  English  race,  5» ; 
contrast  with  English  energy,  00;  climate 
of  Quebec,  60;  northern  lights,  60;  the 
oppressive  monopoly  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company,  00. 

Qneensland  (see  Rival  Colonies  and  Squat- 
ters) ;  question  of  the  cultivation  of  a  trop- 
ical country  not  yet  settled,  291;  little 
hope  of  the  colored  races  being  received  on 
equal  terms  of  citizenship,  292  ;  physical 
condition  of  the  colonists  on  the  Downs  and 
in  Brisbane,  297 ;  population  of  (from  1800 
to  1S06),  332. 

R. 

Racr,  war  of,  in  America,  221 ;  in  New  Zea- 
land, 221;  in  Mexico,  221 ;  disappearance 
of  physical  type,  222  (see  Saxon  and  Latin 
Races);  gradual  destruction  of  races,  the 
bearing  of,  on  religion,  2-4  (sej  English 
Race)  ;  probable  opposition  of  the  Victori- 
ans to  the  Queensland  colonists  availing 
themselves  of  the  labor  of  the  dark-skinned 
races,  291 ;  unfairness  of  the  planters  to 
the  dark-skins  292;  danger  of  peonage, 
292. 


Rail  and  river,  SO ;  railways  in  America  pre- 
ceding population,  SO;  converging  lines 
and  parallel  lines,  80,  83. 

Ranchmen,  cooks,  and  hostlers,  141  :  their 
roughness,  142;  dislike  to  "  biled  shirts," 
142: 

Red  Indians  (see  Indians). 

Representation  in  the  Northern  ami  South- 
ern States,  35. 

Reptiles,  in  New  South  Wales,  294;  Tas- 
mania, 350;   a  snake  story,  350. 

Republican  party  in  the  United  States,  com- 
plete organization  and  great  power  of,  21*2. 

Rhode  Island,  smallness  of  territory  and 
population,  51. 

Richmond,  22  ;  defenses  of,  24;  future  pros- 
pects of,  20:  Washington's  statue  in,  26; 
Hollywood  Cemetery,  27. 

Riley,  Port,  the  centre  of  the  United  States, 
84. 

Rival  colonies  and  towns— Australia  and  New 
Zealand,  293;  New  Zealand  hitherto  main- 
ly aristocratic,  New  Soutli  Wales  and  Vic- 
toria democratic,  283;  separation  of  New 
Zealand  and  Australia  by  a  wide  ocean, 
283;  New  Zealand  presenting  to  Australia 
a  rugged  coast,  while  her  ports  and  bays 
are  turned  toward  America  and  Polynesia, 
2S4  :  difference  of  climate,  2S4 ;  energy  of 
the  Australians  as  compared  with  tlie  su- 
pineuess  of  the  New  Zealanders,  2S5;  dif- 
ferent appearance  of  the  people  in  the  two 
colonies,  280 ;  New  South  Wales,  Queens- 
land, Victoria,  288;  probable  wide  polit- 
ical differences  in  the  future,  291)  (see  Squat- 
ters) ;  Sydney  and  Melbourne,  297  ;  rivalry 
of,  297;  seasons  in  New  Zealand  and  Aus- 
tralia, 310;  climate,  i  07 ;  the  question  of 
confederation  of  the  Pacific  calories,  353; 
willingness  of  the  colonies  for  free  trade 
with  each  other,  352  ;  postal  and  cu-toms 
union,  35.!;  difficulties  in  the  way  of  con- 
federation, 352;  choice  of  future  capital, 
352;  desirability  of  selecting  some  obscure 
village,  and  not  a  great  town,  352  ;  the 
bearing  of  confederation  on  imperial  inter- 
ests, 35i;  and  on  colonial  ones,  353;  our 
duty  in  case  it  should  lead  to  independence, 
"54. 

Riverina,  the  (see  Victoria  and  Newspapers). 

Rockwell,  Porter,  135,  130;  death  of  Captain 
Gunnison,  of  the  Federal  Engineers,  near 
Rockwell's  house,  14'». 

Rocky  Mountains,  76:  sublime  view  nf.  from 
Denver,  94;  Black  Mountains,  105;  the 
Wind  River  Chain,  etc.  105;  dreaded  al- 
kali dust  of  the  desert,  100;  a  fine  scene, 
108;  the  Elk  Monntains,  10S;  game,  etc. 
108;  Rocky  Mountain  plateau,  los;  soli- 
tude of,  108;  sudden  arrival  by  night  at  a 
Mormon  camp,  108 ;  a  Mormon  welcome, 
10S;  Echo  Canon,  109. 

Rowdyism  in  the  West,  put  down  by  the  God- 
fearing New  Englanders,  178. 

Russia  (see  India — Russian  approach  to). 


Sacramento,  166;  the  Sacramento  River, 
100. 

San  Francisco,  its  future  conm  ction  with  Eu- 
rope by  means  of  the  Pacific  Railway,  73 


560 


Index. 


(see  Golden  City) ;  its  claim  to  be  one  of 
Hie  chief  stations  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  high- 
way mund  the  world,  195;  remarks  on  its 
probable  future,  196-199. 

San  Fraucisco  and  Chicago,  the  cosmopolitan- 
ism of,  compared,  224. 

San  Jose,  M  the  Garden  City,"  1ST. 

Sandhurst,  300,  801;  aspect  and  character  of 
the  town,  301 ;  the  •*■  Government  Reserve," 
301 ;  Chinese  clerks  and  diggers,  301 ;  un- 
just treatment  of,  301,  302. 

Sandridg:  (see  Victorian  Ports). 

Saxon  and  Latin  races  in  America  (see  West- 
ern States),  sharp  conflict  between,  180. 

Saxon,  the,  the  only  extirpating  racj  on 
earth,  221. 

Sciude  (see  India). 

Scotch,  the  (see  India,  Bomb:iy). 

Servants,  in  India,  43S,  439. 

Sierra  Nevada,  152;  its  grim  aspect,  153; 
and  obstacles  to  travelling  westward,  153, 
155,  150. 

Sikhs  (see  India — Umritsur). 

Simla  (see  India). 

Slavery,  effects  of,  CI ;  a  slaver,  50,  57. 

South  Australia,  357,  3:  8. 

Southern  States,  planters  of,  formerly  rulers 
of  America,  20;  disunion  of  society,  during 
the  war,  30  ;  hatred  to  tho  Mew  England 
States,  37,  38. 

South  America,  society  of,  disorganized,  29  ; 
injurious  effect  on,  of  the  banana- tree  grow- 
ing wild,  and  offering  food  without  labor, 
32,  33. 

Sphinx,  the,  474. 

Spiritualism  (see  Churches  in  America). 

Squatters,  the,  tenants  of  the  Crown  land  in 
Queensland,  2;  0  ;  struggle  in  Victoria  be- 
tween, and  the  agricultural  democracy, 
290;  the  monopolization  of  land  discour- 
aged by  the  democracy,  293;  the  squatter 
aristocracy,  SOS;  meaning  of  the  term, 
3  S  ;  the  squatter  the  nabob  of  Sydney  and 
Melbourne,  309;  squatter  complaints,  309; 
what  the  townsmen  think  of,  309  ;  evils  of 
the  squatter  system,  309  ;  almost  entire  ap- 
propriation of  the  lands  in  Victoria,  310 ; 
colonial  democracy,  perception  by,  of  the 
dangers  of  the  land  monopoly,  310  :  popu- 
lar movement  for  the  nationalization  of 
land,  310;  Radical  legislation  against  land 
monopoly,  310;  the  squatter  denunciation 
of,  311  ;  his  right  to  impound  cattle,  311  ; 
interest  of  Victoria  in  putting  down  the 
monopoly,  311,  312. 
Stenhouse,  Klder,  the  Mormon,  111  ;  his  an- 
swer to  the  question,  "Has  Brigham's  elec- 
tion ever  been  opposed  ?"  112  ;  postmaster, 
117;  denounced  by  the  Vedette  newspaper, 
117;  editor  of  the  Teleciroph,  117.  dislike 
to  jok^s,  US;  Artemus  Ward's  joke  to, 
1 1 S  ;  Stenhouse's  opinion  of  Mormon  and 
Welsh  coal,  126:  his  rebuke  of  the  author, 
127. 

Suffrage,  negro,  reading  and  writing  basis 

for,  34 
Sukkur  (see  India — Sclnde). 
Sydney,  282;  arrival  off  the  "Heads,"  2S5; 
Sydney  Cove,  2S5;  appearance  of  the  town, 
285;  the  Midsummer  Meeting  of  the  Syd- 
ney Jockey  Club  on  New  Year's  Day,  280 : 
appearance   of  the   ladies   on   the   grand 


stand,  280;  the  young  people,  2S6;  notrace 
of  convict  blood  in  the  faces  on  the  race- 
course, 2S7:  the  last  of  the  bush-rangers, 
287;  English  fruits,  foliage,  etc,  287; 
heat,  succeeded  by  a  gale,  .ST;  wealth  in 
coal,  292,  993 ;  the  city  of  pleasure,  i94 ; 
tendency  of  the  colonists  to  rush  to  towns 
to  spend  their  money,  293,  294  (see  Rival 
Colonies);  opposition  of  the  operative 
classes  of,  to  immigration  and  transporta- 
tion, 32.i,  330;  University  of,  370,  377. 


T. 

Taj  Mahal  (see  India — Mohammedan  Citiea 

—Agra). 
Tasmania,  pleasant  climate  of,  312  ;  English 
scenery,  342;  and  homes,  etc.  342;  Maria 
Van  Diemen'a  Land,  342;  the  Tamar  River, 
"42;  Launceston,  342  ;  southward  to  Ilobar- 
ton,  342;  deserted  and  disheartening  state 
of  the  country,  342  :  bountifulness  of  na- 
ture, 343;  great  number  of  naturalized 
fruits,  etc.  343;  the  Ireland  of  the  South, 
343;  the  almost  abandoned  harbor  of  llo- 
barton,  343 ;  blight  of  the  convict  settle- 
ment, 343;  total  extirpation  of  the  abo- 
rigines, 343;  slight  increase  of  population 
in  the  colony,  345 ;  iron  and  coal  abundant, 
but  seldom  worked,  345;  consumption  of 
spirits  in,  345  ;  lotus-eating,  345  ;  the  laud 
not  yet  free  from  tracts  of  convict  blood, 
345;  fearful  character  of  convict  punish- 
ment, 340;  testimony  of  a  Catholic  bishop 
respecting,  340 ;  deeds  of  the  Pierce-Green- 
hill  party,  340  ;  Mr.  Frost  at  Port  Arthur, 
347 ;  the  convict  system  as  viewed  in  the 
colony,  347  ;  "  Tasmanian  bolters,"  347  ; 
objections  to  convicts  entering  the  free  col- 
onies, 347;  advantages  reaped  by  colonists 
from  convict  labor,  347 ;  the  Australian 
colonies  planted  as  convict  settlements, 
34S  ;  threats  of  the  Victorians  (and  in  old 
times  the  Virginians)  to  retaliate  for  ths 
shipment  to  them  of  convicts,  348  ;  Tas- 
manian society,  34S ;  and  government, 
34S  ;  working  of  the  ballot,  34't ;  a  ride  to 
see  the  naturalized  salmon,  349:  the  sal- 
mon madness,  350  ;  causing  the  destruction 
of  all  indigenous  birds,  350;  and  has  in- 
troduced  the  British  wasp  in  the  ova,  350; 
reptiles,  350;  moonlight  in  Tasmania,  351. 

Teetotallers  (see  Pitcairn  Island). 

Telegraph,  the,  in  the  American  desert,  100. 

Territories,  the,  their  capabilities,  113. 

Thompson,  William,  the  Maori  king-maker, 
272 ;  his  dress  and  high  character,  277  : 
true  patriotism,  277;  insulted  whenever  he 
entered  an  English  town,  27S;  his  death, 
27S. 

Thugs,  New  Zealand.  239,  240,  242. 

Toronto  (see  Canada). 

Transportation  (see  Convicts), 


U. 

Umihtsuh  (see  India). 

"  Uncle  Sam's  money,"  opinions  of  how  it 

goes,  209. 
University,  English,  men  at  the  New  Zealand 

diggings,  240,  241. 


Index. 


5G1 


Utah,  127  J  first  occupation  of,  129;  annexed 
t<>  the  Union,  129  ;  theories  of  annexation, 
129  ;  approach  of  the  Pacific  Railway,  liiO  ; 
intended  to  put  down  Mormonism,  130, 
the  Mormons  will  not  defend  their  conn- 
try,  but  retreat  and  pioneer  the  way  for 
further  English  settlements,  130;  the  jus- 
tice or  injustice  of  interference,  13*2,  133. 


Van  Diemf.n's  Lani>  (see  Tasmania). 

Vancouver  Island  (see  Pacific). 

Victoria  (see  Rival  Colonies),  the  smallest  of 
our  Southern  colonies  except  Tasmania, 
295  ;  and  the  wealthiest,  290 ;  settlement 
(in  1S35)  on  the  site  where  Melbourne  now 
stands,  290  ;  population  of  Melbourne,  290; 
buildings,  railroad,  income,  and  debt  of 
Victoria,  290;  talent  and  energy  brought 
in  by  the  rush  for  gold,  290;  public  spirit 
of  the  people,  296;  more  English,  not  more 
American,  than  the  people  of  New  South 
Wales,  297;  effect  of  the  gold  discoveries, 
293  ;  discouragement,  by  the  Democrats, 
of  the  monopolization  of  land,  29S ;  popu- 
lation of,  now  stationary,  298  ;  admirable 
system  of  statistics,  298  ;  statistical  history 
of,  299 ;  three  staples  of,  299  ;  from  Mel- 
bourne to  Kyneton,  299;  harvest  work  in 
Victoria,  29 <» ;  the  "Thistle  Prevention 
Act,"  2U9  ;  agricultural  villages,  299 ;  the 
towns  of  Castlemaine  and'  Sandhurst  (see 
Sandhurst),  300;  a  praire-nio,  303;  the 
Murray  River,  304;  its  insignificance  as  a 
liver,  394;  but  importance  to  commerce, 
304;  the  "Rtvcrina,"  304;  territory  in- 
cluded in  it,  304;  nature  of  productions  as 
shown  by  the  newspapers,  304-300;  sea- 
sons and  climate,  300,  307;  plutocracy  in, 
307  (see  Squatter) ;  Upper  House  of,  going 
into  committee  on  its  own  constitution, 
313;  probability  of  its  disappearance,  313; 
class  animosity  in,  315;  education  in,  310, 
317  ;  protection  to  industry  in,  321-327. 

Victorian  Ports  —  William-town,  Sandridge, 
and  Geelong,  33'.) ;  early  prospects  and 
present  ruinous  state  of  Geelong.  331  ;  rid- 
icule of,  at  Melbourne,  339;  fine  country 
round  Geelong,  340;  wheat  and  vines  of, 
340;  Ballarat,  340  ;  mining  district  around, 
340  ;  names  of  places  at  the  mines,  a  chro- 
nological guide  to  date  of  settlement,  34!; 
climatic  changes,  341. 

Vigilance  Committees  in  'Western  America 
(see  Lynch  Law);  San  Francisco  and  the 
Sandwich  Islands,  179. 

Virginia,approach  to,  17  ;  opinions  in,  respect- 
ing the  war,  19  ;  rivers  and  mineral  wealth 
of,  23  ;  in  production  inferior  to  poorer 
states,  23;  competition  of  white  and  black 
labor  in,  33. 

Virginia  City,  arrival  at,  145;  an  unsatisfac- 


tory governor,  140;    dancing-rooms,  147; 
substitution  for   ladies,  147;    peculiarities 
of  climate,   147;  whi.-ky-shop-,  1  ,S  ;  Arte- 
mus  Ward's  opinion  of,  14^. 
Virginian  twilight  and  scenery,  21. 


W. 

Washington,  first  view  of,  40. 

Washoe,  in  Nevada,  its  reputation,  140. 

Wellington,  232,  233  ;  fruit  and  flowers  of, 
233  ;  cattle-branding  with  an  old  college 
friend,  2S& 

West  (America),  future  capital  of  SO  ;  empire, 
setting  toward  the,  83-S5 ;  plains  of  the, 
SO  ;  men  and  women  of,  their  dignity, 
etc.  141  ;  power  of  sheriff  in,  170;  qualifi- 
cations for  a  sheriff,  170. 

West  Honduras,  220. 

Western  States  (of  America)  growing  moro 
English,  while  the  Atlantic  States  are  fall- 
ing into  the  hands  of  the  Irish,  42,  43  ; 
Western  perception  of  the  dangers  from 
Irish  preponderance  on  the  Atlantic  sea- 
board,  43;  wideness  of  Western  thought, 
S3  ;  advantages  of  the  Western  over  the 
Eastern  States,  84 ;  Western  objection  to 
greenbacks,  149 ;  agreement  to  accept 
forged  notes  if  well  done,  149  ;  fancy  for 
classical  names,  101 ;  honesty,  1S5. 

Western  editors,  117;  Connor,  a  Fenian 
editor  of  the  Union  Vedette,  117;  his  de- 
nunciation of  Mormonisin,  117;  an  editor's 
room  in  Denver,  125 ;  influence  of  Con- 
nor, 115  ;  ■'  wasp-like  "  pertinacity  of  the 
Vedette,  127;  injury  done  by  it  to  liberty 
of  thought  throughout  the  world,  127  ;  ed- 
itors in  America  as  a  rule  foreigners,  and 
mostly  Irishmen,  14S;  editorial  inquiry 
for  "Tennyson  and  Thomas  T.  Carlyle," 
14S;  murder  of  James  King,  17o  ;  an  edi- 
tor's story,  170. 

Williamstown  (see  Victorian  Ports). 

Winthrop,  Governor,  founder  of  Plymouth, 
Mass.,  17. 

Wisconsin  (-ee  Norwegian). 

Wolf,  a  white.  91. 

Woman,  in  Victoria,  330 ;  female  suffrage, 
330;  social  position  of,  bad  both  in  En- 
gland and  Australia,  330;  superiority  of, 
in  Western  States  of  America,  337;  a 
Kansas  argumet  for  'Oman's  rights,  S37 ; 
disproportion  of  the  sexes  in  the  Australian 
colonies,  337;  the  American  Sewing  Clubs 
during  the  war,  337;  woman's  place 
among  the  British  section  of  the  Teutonic 
race,  338,  339  ;  want  of,  in  young  coun- 
tries, 358,  359  ;  Irish  work-house  girls  sent 
to  the  colonies,  359,  300  ;  their  bad  charac- 
ter and  influence,  300. 

V. 

Yoektown,  ancient  memories  of,  17. 


THE     END, 
Aa  2 


VALUABLE  AND  INTERESTING  WORKS 

FOR 

PUBLIC  AND  PEIVATE  LIBRARIES 

Published  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  New  York. 


t&~  For  a  full  List  of  Books  suitable  for  Libraries,  see  IlAiirr.R  &  Brothers' 
Trade-List  and  Catalogue,  which  may  be  had  gratuitously  on  application 
to  the  Publishers  personally,  or  by  letter  enclosing  Mne  Cents  in  Postags 
stamps. 

tW~  IIakper  &  Brothers  will  send  their  publications  by  mail,  postage  prepaid  [ex- 
cepting  certain  books  excluded  from  the  mail  by  reason  of  weight],  on  re- 
ceipt of  the  price.  Haider  &  Brothers'  School  and  College  Text-Books  art 
marked  in  this  list  with  an  asterisk  (*). 


MACAULAY'S  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  The  History  of  England 
from  the  Accession  of  James  II.  By  Thomas  BabingtonMacaulay. 
New  Edition,  from  new  Electrotype  Plates.  8vo,  Cloth,  Gilt  Tops,  Five 
Volumes  in  a  Box,  $10  00  per  set.  Sold  only  in  sets.  Cheap  Edi- 
tion, 12mo,  Cloth,  $4  00. 

MACAULAY'S  LIFE  AND  LETTERS.  The  Life  and  Letters  of  Lord 
Macaulay.  By  his  Nephew,  G.  Otto  Trevelyan,  M.P.  With  Por- 
trait on  Steel.  Complete  in  2  vols.,8vo,  Cloth,  uncut  edges  and  gilt 
tops,  $5  00 ;  Sheep,  $G  00  ;  Half  Calf,  $9  50.  Popular  Edition,  two 
vols,  in  one,  12mo,  Cloth,  $  1  75. 

HUME'S  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  The  History  of  England,  from 
the  Invasion  of  Julius  Cassar  to  the  Abdication  of  James  II.,  1688.  By 
David  Hume.  G  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $ 4  80  ;  Sheep,  $7  20 ;  Half  Calf, 
$15  30.     New  Edition,  from  new  Electrotype  Plates,  nearly  ready. 

GIBBON'S  ROME.  The  History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire.  By  Edward  Giubon.  With  Notes  by  Rev.  II.  H.  Milman 
and  M.  Gcizot.  With  Index.  6  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  .$4  80;  Sheep, 
$7  20 ;  Half  Calf,  $15  80.  New  Edition,  from  new  Electrotype  Plates, 
in  Press. 

IIILDRETH'S  UNITED  STATES.  History  of  the  United  States. 
First  Series  :  From  the  Discovery  of  the  Continent  to  the  Organiza- 
tion of  the  Government  under  the  Federal  Constitution.  Second  Se- 
ries :  From  the  Adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution  to  the  End  of 
the  Sixteenth  Congress.  Bv  Richard  Hildreth.  G  vols.,  8vo,  Cloth, 
$18  00;  Sheep,  $21  00;  Half  Calf,  $31  50. 


2       Valuable  and  Interesting  Works  for  Puttie  and  Private  Libraries. 

MOTLEY'S  DUTCH  REPUBLIC.  The  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic. 
A  History.  By  John  Loth hop  Motley,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.  With  a 
Portrait  of  William  of  Orange.  3  vols.,  8vo,  Cloth,  $10  50;  Sheep, 
$12  00;  Half  Calf,  $17  25.     Cheap  Edition,  $6  00. 

MOTLEY'S  UNITED  NETHERLANDS!  History  of  the  United  Neth- 
erlands: from  the  Death  of  William  the  Silent  to  the  Twelve  Years' 
Truce — IGO'J.  With  a  full  View  of  the  English-Dutch  Struggle  against 
Spain,  and  of  the  Origin  and  Destruction  of  the  Spanish  Armada.  By 
John  Lothrop  Motley,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.  Portraits.  4  vols.,  8vo, 
Cloth,  $14  00  ;   Sheep,  $10  00  ;   Half  Calf,  $23  00. 

MOTLEY'S  LIFE  AND  DEATH  OF  JOHN  OF  BARNEVELD.  The 

Life  and  Death  of  John  of  Barneveld,  Advocate  of  Holland  :  with  a 
View  of  the  Primary  Causes  and  Movements  of  "The  Thirty-years' 
War."  By  John  Lothuop  Motley,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.  Illustrated.  2 
vols.,8vo,  Cloth,  $7  00;  Sheep,  $8  00;  Half  Calf,  $11  50. 

FIRST  CENTURY  OF  THE  REPUBLIC.      A  Review  of  American 

Progress.     8vo,  Cloth,  $5  00  ;  Sheep,  $5  50  ;  Half  Morocco,  $7  25. 

*HAYDN'S  DICTIONARY  OF  DATES,  relating  to  all  Ages  and  Na- 
tions. For  Universal  Reference.  Edited  by  Benjamin  Vincent,  As- 
sistant Secretary  and  Keeper  of  the  Library  of  the  Royal  Institution  of 
Great  Britain,  and  Revised  for  the  Use  of  American  Readers.  8vo, 
Cloth,  $3  50 ;  Sheep,  $3  91. 

HUDSON'S  HISTORY  OF  JOURNALISM.  Journalism  in  the  United 
States,  from  1690  to  1872.  By  Frederic  Hudson.  8vo,  Cloth,  $5  00 ; 
Half  Calf,  $7  25. 

JEFFERSON'S  DOMESTIC  LIFE.  The  Domestic  Life,  of  Thomas 
Jefferson :  Compiled  from  Family  Letters  and  Reminiscences,  by  his 
Great-granddaughter,  Sarah  N.  Randolph.  Illustrated.  Crown  8vo, 
Cloth,  $2  50. 

JOHNSON'S  COMPLETE  WORKS.  The  Works  of  Samuel  Johnson, 
LL.D.  With  an  Essay  on  his  Life  and  Genius,  by  Arthur  Murphy, 
Esq.     2  vols.,  8vo,  Clo'th,  $4  00 ;  Sheep,  $5  00  ;  "Half  Calf,  $8  50. 

KINGLAKE'S  CRIMEAN  WAR.  The  Invasion  of  the  Crimea:  its 
Origin,  and  an  Account  of  its  Progress  down  to  the  Death  of  Lord  Rag- 
lan. By  Alexander  William  King  lake.  With  Maps  and  Plans. 
Three  Volumes  now  ready.  12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00  per  vol.;  Half  Calf, 
$3  75  per  vol. 

LAMB'S  COMPLETE  WORKS.  The  Works  of  Charles  Lamb.  Com- 
prising his  Letters,  Poems,  Essays  of  Elia,  Essays  upon  Shakspeare, 
Hogarth,  &c,  and  a  Sketch  of  his  Life,  with  the  Final  Memorials,  by 
T.  Noon  Talfourd.  With  Portrait.  2  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $3  00; 
Half  Calf,  $6  50. 


DATE  DUE 


H1GHSMITH  #45115 


DA11.D57  J    , 

Greater  Britain;  a  record  of  travel  in 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1   1012  00133  2917 


